Chapter 7 To Those Who Wait

It was certainly true for Tinkerbell and Donny as they went through life together. And since Groak had helped launch Newell’s career, Hoagland was happy to pull strings for him when the publicist stopped by the Ansonia looking to boost Sadasia’s career. So when the columnist’s health continued its slow downhill slide, it made all the sense in the world that Hoagy would ask his old mentor to help him plan his funeral. Not that he was tired of living, scared of dying or anything like that, he had just never gotten around to doing it.

That guy turned out to be Brooklyn native Larry Fragiacomo. Headquartered three short blocks from the Ansonia, he had sat behind the same understated black mahogany desk for 25+ years, ever since his older brother had forced him to give up his dream of becoming a doctor and put him in charge of the chain of funeral homes he’d successfully managed ever since. Staffers said Larry’s well-cut dark gray three-piece suits heightened his distinguished appearance; some thought he resembled something out of the Roman Forum; he was convinced the new plugs put him back on the road to youth and beauty—the best of both worlds. “Imagine,” he told the guests in his office, “a full head of hair in less than the year!”

Groak said that was tremendous, unbelievable, then had to look away before he lost his composure.

“Yeah, the things they can do!” The mortician’s implants looked purplish and angry like bee stings turning septic. “I have to say,” he told Groak, “you’re looking prosperous! Who’s your little friend here?”

Neither visitor took the bait, concentrating instead on what they’d come for and on Larry’s greed to help them get it. Within the hour, Newell had inked a pre-paid plan for a bronze satin-lined casket, death notices in all the big New York dailies and a four-day viewing with music and non-denominational service in the 76^th Street location’s stunning Magenta Room. (“The one with all the poofs and mirrors.”) In addition, a hearse and two-car procession would carry Hoags in splendor to his eternal rest at Brooklyn’s legendary Green-Wood Cemetery, where Albert Anastasia was also buried.

“Let me just add," Larry schmoozed, “that all of these selections are ones you and your family can really be very proud of. And because you’re a dear friend of my friend Connie, Guarnari Bros. will be honored to provide these services to you at a special 40% discount.”

All three men were delighted they’d wrapped up their important end-of-life business so quickly, amicably and economically, meeting if not exceeding the expectations they’d had when they first sat down. Newell told Larry what a load this was off his mind, then told Groak how excited he felt about his column promoting “Sadasia! Live!” at The Umbrella Man.

“Not on your life!” Larry insisted. “I’ll order one of our limos for him! Nothing’s too good for special friends of my friend Groak and Guarnari Bros.!”

Groak appreciated this special courtesy as well as Larry’s offer of “a little something?” from the mini fridge he’d installed under his desk. A couple of shots and shared memories later, Connie felt relaxed enough to ask if he had, “Any objection to giving your brother a call?” A request he’d rehearsed so often he hoped it didn’t sound like he was coming to Jerry hat in hand. He hoped it would sound like he was doing him a favor.

A notorious racketeer from the old neighborhood, the elder Fragiacomo brother had been printing money as the city’s dark king of laundry and dry-cleaning supply long before the Dodgers and Giants ever thought of moving out west. But even a portfolio as diverse as his could stand a little improvement.

He listened to Groak’s idea of swapping two of his most underperforming assets, the buildings housing Golden Luck Cleaners and Beaks ‘я Us, for a 40% stake in a new and improved Umbrella Man, powered by up-and-coming mega-star Sadasia Trayne. The publicity that would make the chanteuse a household name was in the bag. All the King of Clean had to do was have his boys strike a pair of matches and Groak’s nightclub could expand its footprint, no questions asked.

“Make it 50%,” was Jerry’s counter-offer, which Groak gratefully accepted, also sealing the fates of eight Jiàng family members, Dieter Lang and scores of his feathered friends as part of his devil’s bargain. “It’s always sad when people get hurt,” the racketeer declared. “But sometimes that’s the price of progress.”

Tinkerbell thought it was sad when he and Donny Damon learned they had suddenly lost half their nightclub and could do nothing about it.

Just as Groak thought it was sad when a telephone call came in a few months later informing him that death had come swiftly to Mr. Newell at the Ansonia, following another one of his chest pain parties. Another substitute teacher had been sent his way and Hoagy’s great heart simply gave out while he was in the saddle.

The latter sadness turned to anger when Larry Fragiacomo let the publicist know that he was “awfully sorry,” but Guarnari Bros. policy couldn’t possibly allow Mr. Newell’s viewing to take place in the same location as the business’s preferred white clientele. And that was how the mortal remains of the North Star’s celebrated columnist wound up being the centerpiece of a memorial service held at The Umbrella Man which, while its costs were fully covered by Guarnari Bros., felt embarrassingly cheap rather than dignified.

The Pulitzer Prize-winner’s body soon wilted, laid out in the nightclub’s late September heat. The entire place had a grade school assembly look, with its checker-cloth tables stashed out of sight and uncomfortable straight-backed chairs arranged in neat rows. The dead man’s bier was accorded a place of honor, framed by blowups from the Zapruder film and placed only a few short steps from Donny Damon, who remained on display at the club nearly two years into his explosion-induced coma. The intravenous tubes studding the founder’s arms had been tinted an inky shade for the occasion as had his feeding and urine collection bags. The club’s cash bar, meanwhile, stood ready for action, draped in crepe with little accent lamps along its length designed to resemble pink pillbox hats.

But these and the other festive touches were apparently not enough to draw the crowds of fans that Sadasia had brought in at her peak, let alone Newell’s readers, who had mostly forgotten him. This left The Umbrella Man’s inner circle quite alone during the four-day viewing meant to honor Groak’s friend and colleague.

Tinkerbell looked sleazy in his paper mourner’s armband throughout the first long day into the second, which nearly bankrupted the publicist’s faith in humankind. Then an armor-plated limo pulled up to the curb around 3:00 on the third day, causing Hoagland’s clumsily rouged cheeks to seemingly flush with gratitude as a pair of barrel-chested gunsels eased themselves through the club’s front door, frisked the maître d’ and told him, “Take a powder.”

“Do like they say,” Groak said, since the style if not the muscle seemed familiar. “You always did play it smart,” said a voice from behind him. And the two escapees from the old neighborhood soon were facing each other again, as they had long ago on the mean streets of Brooklyn. In this corner, wearing rumpled black mourning, Constantine Groak, winding down from a long hit-or-miss career; in the other, wearing a magnificent orange flair-pant corduroy lounge suit from Johnny Carson apparel, Jerry Fragiacomo, noted civic leader and humanitarian, celebrating 30+ years in the gangster trade.

“Sorry to hear about your pal,” said New York City’s King of Clean, “I know you guys were close.” Jerry had recently expanded his borderline legal empire to include unlicensed pinball machines and, in a bid to stay in step with the crazy times, now earned a nickel wherever disco balls spun and sparkled anywhere throughout the five boroughs.

Jerry’s second wife was another story. She still gave off a hippie chick vibe despite the husky Bergdorf Goodman custom-shop outfit she’d had herself sewn into like Marilyn Monroe at JFK’s birthday party. Aside from cleaning her nails with a fancy plastic toothpick, all she did to show how much she cared about the deceased was extend her hand and stage-whisper “My condolences” to Groak, then tell hubby that she needed to be somewhere else. She was still a class act, straight out of East Montpelier.

“Sure, sweets,” Jerry said, signaling his entourage. “Drive Whitely wherever she wants.” Then she was gone, like she’d never even been there.

“How about those Yanks?” Groak needled, trying to get a rise from his old acquaintance.

“My Missus is from New England, I’ve heard more than enough bitching about Bucky Fucking Dent!”

Connie, of course, knew full well that Whitely Allen, the mobster’s better half, had begun life as a Vermont farm girl, that she’d later modeled for Talbots, studied at Barnard, earned a Columbia Ph.D. and become tenured faculty in the Art History Department at Queens College. Students at that laid-back campus had a habit of laughing behind her back because Professor Allen believed fashion meant pouring her fading Joni Mitchell looks into unflattering new ultra-suede wineskins or whatever else had caught her fancy in last month’s “Vogue.” Plus, Whitely always had been clueless when it came to accessories.

But how this aging Granola Girl and her Don ever hooked up and, more amazingly, managed to stay together all these years later was something Groak never understood, especially given their nearly 20-year age difference. Sometimes he thought that it had to be the hair, which they both fetishized. Recently, however, he’d begun suspecting it was because something dead stared back when you looked into their eyes.

“Oh, that?” said Jerry roguishly. “She literally ran into me in front of the Fulton Fish Market. That was more than a dozen years ago. She drove a forest green Volkswagen Beetle back then. Damn thing even had a peace symbol decal stuck on the hood! I was trying to park my old Caddy, a real land yacht. We had a fender-bender.”

Fragiacomo’s taste ran to something tropical. Soon host and guest were paying their last respects to the dear departed over mai tais, then a second round, then another, after Jerry decided his office could look after itself today. The King of Clean looked the club up and down as they knelt beside Newell’s casket. “How’s business?” Always curious since half its take was his in perpetuity.

“On the rebound,” Connie told him. Profits had nose-dived when Sadasia first went missing. A few weeks later and they were packing them in again with Trayne wanna-bes. “Popping up like Elvis impersonators,” he was happy to say. “Now we get a full house nearly every night. Except for the last few, of course.” When Newell’s open casket had kept them away in droves.

“As well as you’d expect after the huge hit he took. But what was he supposed to do? Where’s he going to go? And what about this poor schnook?” Groak nodded at Newell. “You think it’s right he signed on the dotted line for a 76^th Street send-off, then winds up down here?”

“That’s on brother Larry, friend. He’s sacrificed a lot to make our funeral business successful, now I let him run it however he wants.”

Jerry shook his head, tired of hearing it. “Don’t be smart,” he cautioned. “You know that comes with the territory. And don’t pretend your hands are clean. You knew what going half-sies on those properties meant. And how things would turn out for that lady chief after you and your boy in the box here set her up.”

“I’m not talking about our hands or his,” Groak said, pointing down at Newell’s casket. “What’s the matter, old buddy/old pal?” One of Spike’s collection plates sat pathetically empty on the coffin’s lid. “Where’s the old Catholic spirit? Don’t you want to give ‘til it hurts and support the missions, so people will ignore what your family really does to pay its bills? Aren’t you going to feed the kitty?”

“Who ya kidding? Everybody knows black cats are bad luck.” Jerry thought he’d shut down Groak with this killer joke at Hoagy’s expense. But his being in or not on Umbrella Man crimes and profits didn’t mean Groak was going to let this SOB piss all over his dead friend. And that went double for his plug-headed brother. Not without paying a price, they wouldn’t.

“Whaddaya got there?” Jerry asked when the publicist dropped a hand-sized, red-and-white whatchamacallit into the collection plate. Its felt-covered bottom like a muffled gong.

“Recognize it?” A mam-a-luk Swiss Army knife with a thousand-and-one uses. “Your wife pared her nails with it during your wedding. Remember? Your friends all felt so bad they thought you’d die of embarrassment.”

“Ah!” Jerry smiled. “Whitely was wondering where that thing had got off to.”

Groak was super-excited to have the drop on this guy for once. And the multi-tool knife was just for starters. “Notice how this custom toothpick fits perfectly in the handle? Whitely used one just like it to clean the dirt from her nails not half an hour ago. Maybe you’re wondering where I found it?”

“I think you’ll tell me if I ask nice.” Jerry’s expression hadn’t changed, but you could see he was enjoying this little sparring match just as much as Groak, maybe even more.

“Are you asking me nice, Jerry?” His opponent’s hands opened like a dog rolling over to show that he was. “OK, what if I told you that I found it out in Brooklyn? At Capers Greenbergér’s place the night she was killed? How’d you like them apples?”

“I don’t just like, I love them. But, please, don’t stop there! Tell me more!”

“Bet your ass I will, Jerry! I trailed Greenbergér and Sadasia Trayne after they hooked up in a Manhattan dyke bar. And I stumbled on this amazingly useful gadget in the bathroom where Greenbergér was butchered after an anonymous city patrolman showed up at her home, did the deed, then vanished without a trace.”

“My!” Jerry said. “Looks like you’ve stuck your nose in quite a little mystery.”

“Ordinarily, I’d agree,” Groak said right back, “except there’s nothing mysterious about any of it, Jerry. So why don’t we just face facts?

“OK by me. Your wife is a striking woman. Past unique, Jerry, closer to one-in-a-million. Almost to the point where she’d be impossible not to spot, even if she’d done her best to hide her body in a New York City patrolman’s outfit and gone above and beyond to hide her face behind a mix of putty, makeup and a Village People moustache.” Groak ended this little summary with his best Robert Redford starring as Bob Woodward imitation: “Perhaps you’d care to comment or explain?”

For all their differences, and they were many, Jerry liked and respected Connie. If nothing else, The Umbrella Man he helped run had always been a good earner for the family. So rather than lie, he figured he’d do his old neighborhood chum, who’d gotten himself overexcited today, an enormous favor and whittle him down to size.

“Typical Groak,” he told the flack before taking him apart, though not in a mean way. “For as long as me and my brother know you, you’re always thinking you’re so smart and what kids today call ‘ahead of the curve.’ When, really, all you’ve done your whole life is play catch-up with guys who matter and wouldn’t take a dump on you, even if they had the time or inclination.”

Jerry refused to pull any punches here. “I’m telling you for your own good, Groak. Listen up before the smartness you’re so proud of gets you in real trouble.” He then resumed his tale where he’d broken it off.

“Like I said, Whitely and me all started with a fender-bender more than a dozen years ago across from the Fulton Fish Market. She hit me, steps out of this green VW bug to show me insurance and an out-of-state license and was just the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. Probably way too young and educated for me. But, you know, sometimes things like that don’t matter if both parties decide they shouldn’t.

“I’d been out with friends on a charter, reeling in flounder all day, and she took a big chance when this stranger said, ‘Why don’t we just forget about it and meet later where me and my friends are gonna fry our fish?’

“Would you have done that? I don’t think I would have if I were a beautiful woman. But I liked that she knew how to handle herself. With enough spirit to go after what she wanted. I guess that was me.

“We hooked up that night, and while she might look all reserved and laid back, which I guess she learned from her lecturing gig at that big-deal uptown college, she was really passionate in bed, like no other woman I’d ever met. Soon we were inseparable.

“But there was also something distant about her, something I’d never be able to touch but wanted to grab hold of, which I guess was part of what made me nuts about her. So I suppose I wasn’t totally surprised when she told me that she sometimes switch-hit with women, and that she always had, as far back as her Vermont days.

“I was already in love with her, so I told her I didn’t care, fool that I was. I was that hooked. I know now I really wasn’t listening to what she was telling me. I figured maybe it was just a phase, that it would pass, that she’d get over it.

“Or that she was telling me about it because it was a part of her life she hated or was ashamed of or that she’d work to cut it out of herself like a cancer. Or maybe even that I could somehow change her. You know, fix her.”

“Yeah, silly me,” Jerry agreed. “At the same time, I was glad she’d told me about it because it helped me realize how we came from totally different worlds. I’d already decided I wanted to marry Whitely, so I needed to understand as much about those worlds as possible, so our future would have the best chance we could give it.

“I asked her to tell me everything about herself, even though she said she’s nothing special. I tried to find out what made her tick, what got her so excited about all this Art History and French she was studying. She couldn’t figure out why I even bothered and laughed at me every time I begged her to tell me about her dissertation.

“’Why on earth would you care about Marcel Duchamp?’ she asked me. ‘He wasn’t a gangster. He never beat the crap out of people to make them buy laundry supplies!’

“That’s what I get for taking an interest and trying not to be just another jibone. But it turned out that she really was into me, really was trying to make things work between us, and the two of us wound up thinking, ‘What the hell, let’s go for it!’ So one day she opened this bottle of Chateau Margaux that, believe me, was delicious, and began telling me all about Marcel Duchamp. The people he knew and worked with in New York and Paris, his Mona Lisa with the Mustache, and his dirty French pun about how La Giaconda is such a hot piece of ass.

“Looking back on it now, I think that was really the turning point for Whitely and me, maybe even the foundation of our relationship. Well, that and the great sex. We came to a deeper understanding of what would keep us together, hung a Duchamp Retrospective poster in our bedroom and, after that, grew pretty comfortable pretty fast with the idea of getting married and having kids.

“So that’s what we did, got married and had kids and were so happy for a time. She got her professorship at Queens College, mostly on her own, though putting in a good word where it matters never hurts, while I strong-armed my way to the top of the New York rackets.

“But somewhere along the way, a couple of years into the marriage, either the magic started to fade or things got complicated, or I grew up and maybe sensed what was going on. The thing was, Whitely suddenly started being more up front about what she’d told me about herself when we’d first met.”

“She told me about affairs she’d been having on the side with women since we got married.”

“She said she’d been letting me know about them in subtle ways. Guess I must have missed that. But she said she felt terrible I hadn’t understood. And being up front about them now showed how committed she was to staying together with me and the kids.”

Groak asked how the King of Clean felt about having that 800-pound bi-sexual gorilla in the room.

“Right off the bat, I became my father’s son. Whitely told me the truth about herself from the beginning, well almost. That kind of betrayal would have made the old man lose it; well, it made me angry, too. In that old scheme of things, Whitely’s screwing around on me with women would have told me I wasn’t a man, even when I knew that what we had was special, and that our kids were special because we were special.

“Still, we both knew we couldn’t continue putting ourselves through the living hell of infidelity, and we both agreed we needed to talk. So I packed a gun with a screw-in silencer on it, booked a romantic weekend getaway for two in the country and sat down with her after we’d made love, to figure out how we were going to manage the rest of our lives together. I figured that either our little talk would fix things between us or that I was going to blow her brains out.

“The good news was she didn’t want a divorce and didn’t want to hurt either me or the kids. Just as important, she told me she knew her thing with women blew hot and cold. ‘But it’s part of who I am,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve always told you that, Jerry, like I’ve always known and accepted how you earn a living. If we’re going to stay married, like I want us to, and grow old together, I need you to understand how these affairs are sort of a binge thing for me, like my sister and her sweet tooth for pints of Ben & Jerry’s. No more complicated than that. Nothing for you to get hurt about or me to be punished or condemned for. I know that sounds strange. but when the craving comes I either have to satisfy it or everything else gets bent out of shape.

“‘I’ll never be able to control my urges, but once I get my fix the need is satisfied and I can walk away. That’s why I’ve always been able to ditch my partners. No one’s ever walked out on me or dumped me. I’ve made clean breaks with each of them, each and every time.’

“My first reaction,” Jerry continued, “was that I’d never be able to control my temper when she had a new affair. But what she’d said about how I earn my living made a lot of sense. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be about acceptance, give and take and 50/50?

“At least that’s what we’d always said to one another. And if that was true, I realized I could probably keep the gun in my luggage and not put two in her head on the trip back to town because these women meant nothing to her in the long run, like the toys our kids got sick of playing with Christmas mornings. And that made sense too, didn’t it? After they got bored with them, all you saw by the afternoon were our cats jumping in and out of the empty boxes.

“We were still in bed that weekend getaway, too lazy and happy to get up and shower, never mind thinking about what we might want to do for dinner. What you might call a romantic moment, kind of the whole point of calling this time out and trying to re-assess. But instead of whispering some greeting card mush to get her psyched for more horizontal refreshment, I asked her point-blank, ‘Elle a chaud au cul. Who is she?’ She knows French, you know.”

“She asked me what on earth I meant, and I told her, ‘C’mon, Whitely, you used to throw that in my face often enough. You know: L.Q.H.O.O. Say the French letters quick and it sounds like Elle a chaud au cul, ‘she’s a hot piece of ass.’”

“Anyone can read a book,” I told her. “So who’s the hot piece of ass in Duchamp’s Mona Lisa?

“Whitely chose this moment to turn all New England modest on me and reach for her robe. ‘You know, actually,’ she told me, ‘it’s tail not ass.’

“Whatever,” I told her, “it’s still you! You’re the hot piece of ass!”

“Tails/asses, any way you want to call that coin toss, you still win! You’re the most important thing in my life. And nothing’s going to change that, girlfriends or no girlfriends, for as long as we both shall live.”

“Well, I guess it can be when you keep it in the family. Only Whitely wasn’t 100% correct about how her girlfriend dumping ended up. I mean, she really did do the dumping, so far as it went. That much was true. Only this Jew broad in Brooklyn wasn’t happy about it.

“Obviously, she knew I was Whitely’s husband because she’d bought that house out there from us. And once she started threatening to go to the newspapers about their affair unless. . .”

“Unless I used my labor contacts to pressure the TV networks to pick up her second stupid sitcom.”

“No, of course not! Who did she think I was? The best I could have managed would be to hold their commissaries’ uniforms and tablecloths hostage.”

“Nah, just yesterday’s news and desperate, on top of having no honor! I mean, who mocks their own people just to make money, Connie? And not only once, she tried to do it twice!

“Whitely had given her one of those Duchamp Mona Lisa posters from MOMA—to let her know she was a hot piece of ass; excuse me, ‘tail’—when they were going hot and heavy. But once she became a threat to Whitely’s career and my career and to our children’s peace of mind, steps simply had to be taken!

“My brother Larry sits on the state parole board. He did our family a solid, which was to be expected but still very nice of him. He kept his eyes peeled for some fruitcake with a bug up his ass that the cops could trace. And wouldn’t you know? This freak Murphy shows up, the perfect patsy for Greenbergér’s killing.”

“You bet we did! When he came in that first day, Larry told him we had a no drugs policy and needed to check him to make sure he was clean. So we handed him a cup and bag like they do when you apply for hospital work. He headed to the john and gave us our samples. Larry kept them in the freezer until we were ready to plant his crap on Greenbergér’s head. We kept getting samples from him every week until we had feces to burn!”

“Believe me, Connie,” Jerry told him, “you don’t want to see Whitely angry.”

“Murphy’s big crock of sample would have to have been inside her wheeled luggage?”

“Along with the butcher knife from Greenbergér’s kitchen that eventually landed at Baby’s Breath?”

“Whitely hid that in our truck when she left. If you grow up on a farm butchering cows and pigs, you wind up being pretty handy with a blade. We told Murphy to put all the laundry he’d collected in there, too, so we could send another driver and keep the route on schedule. That little bit of fluff you were interested in was no concern of ours. That’s the main reason she left Capers’ house alive.

“Whitely and I used to live in that Brooklyn house when we first got married, you know. And we made a pile of money off it when we sold it to Greenbergér. She was lousy with ‘Kikes’ residuals back then. Funny how things work out sometimes.”

Groak would get to Sadasia in his own good time. Right now, something else bothered him that Fragiacomo needed to answer. “What about the lye business, Jerry? Whitely strangled and butchered that woman, put her decapitated head in a toilet and covered it with human excrement. Not that I’m an expert, but offhand I wouldn’t say any of that’s part of your normal walk-in-the-park murder. I’m just curious, what the hell was that whole business with the drain cleaner on her genitals all about?”

Larry gave the question some thought as he refilled their mai tai glasses one last time. “You know, Connie, I’ve asked Whitely that myself any number of times, and she always tells me it’s her way of saying, ‘This never happened.’”

“Fair enough,” Groak said. “But what do you mean, ‘she always tells me,’ Jerry?”

“Listen, Whitely and I have been married for more than a dozen years, and we’ve both agreed to respect who the other partner is for the sake of the marriage and for the sake of our children. My wife has stuck by me whenever certain aspects of my business force me to do something unpleasant. Do you really think Greenbergér was the first of her lovers to step out of line since we’ve been together?

“My brother Larry keeps an average of 30 MOMA Duchamp Mona Lisa posters on hand in the Guarnari Bros. basement, next to our casket inventory, Whitely always gives one to her girlfriends at the height of their passion. Each poster either winds up being a cherished memento or part of an estate sale if the girlfriend needs to be killed. The choice is entirely theirs.

“You asked me how Whitely and I first met, and I told you about the minor traffic accident that got our love story off and running. What I probably didn’t mention was the fact that she and her green Volkswagen Beetle had been on their way to the Staten Island Ferry that day. And that if we had collided at maybe five miles faster per hour, the trunk in the front of that car probably would have popped open to reveal the corpse of one of the first girl lovers she’d taken up with in New York.

“That woman threatened to out her after Whitely dumped her. And my little angel double-sheeted her body in plastic so the lye she used wouldn’t eat into the carpet of her trunk before she buried it in the Staten Island Fresh Kills landfill. She also told me that disfiguring the crotch with lye has been her signature since she started killing as a teenager, back in Vermont, all the way down to the two dozen or so murders she’s managed to pull off since relocating down here.

“Mind you, not all of them had the same flashy sendoff that she gave Greenbergér.

“If Whitely’s lovers took their breakups like adults and moved on, they lived.

“If they were stupid enough to telephone too much or become grabby after she’d told them ‘Shove off,’ Whitely, me and Larry saw to it they just disappeared, like the one in the rug in the trunk of the VW did in Fresh Kills.

“But if you piss off or threaten Whitely as much as Greenbergér did, then try to strong-arm me with ‘Those Fucking Dykes!’ Well, in that case, what can you say but ‘Let the punishment fit the crime?’”

“Yeah, I laughed too when Whitely gave me the low-down on that one. Of course, we knew our plan for Capers was going to be risky. But I gotta say, that stunt you and Newell pulled with the North Star and Ellia Chase was something out of left field we never saw coming. So thanks for keeping us on our toes with that one!”

Groak worked on his drink and again felt relieved that he’d never tied the knot. “I had no idea,” he said.

“The worst,” Groak agreed. “I can’t say I blame your wife in the least.”

“That cop detective chief you and Newell took care of,” Jerry said, “should have known better. Abusing her position of trust, for Christ’s sake. And that Sadasia Trayne! Christ almighty, way too young for her! And don’t even get me started on how wrong she would have been for you! If you ask me, the best thing would have been to hold a pillow over her face and put her six feet under.”

“Don’t sweat it, Jerry. If I know Ellia Chase, our little songbird is wagging her little tail in heaven tonight. And Murphy?”

“Fuckin’ dykes, huh?” the King of Clean snorted, throwing up his hands in frustration combined with a big laugh.

“What can I say?” Groak agreed. “That’s what amore boils down to these days.”

“Just be careful you don’t wise off to friends too often,” Jerry told him. “Or try to fix your girlfriends, they’ll just break your heart if you do. If you love them, leave them alone the way god made them.”

“This has been great, Connie, but I gotta get home now before Whitely wanders off again. You know, following her heart. . .” A turn of phrase that made them both crack up. “After all, my strange, hypnotic power over women can’t last forever. Even if I am handsome as sin and a made guy!”

Groak sat quietly at the table, glad Jerry’s self-esteem remained intact despite its many trials. But he also felt old age creeping up on him for what was probably the first time in his life.

Fragiacomo had muscled into his topcoat, dropped a couple of Franklins into the collection plate on Newell’s casket, then stepped up to the Rock-Ola he’d gifted to The Umbrella Man (give him points for style) and fed a Kennedy half into the juke that gulped it down like a slot machine. It took a while for his selection to play. Time enough for Groak to switch Donny Damon’s I.V. bottles and slide the nightclub’s stuffed monthly profits envelope into the coat pocket of his old buddy from Brooklyn.

If there’s a cure for this

I don’t want it. . .

(Doan’ wan’ it.)

On his way out, the elder Fragiacomo brother said something to Groak about maybe finding himself a girl.

“I’m way ahead of you on that one, Jerry,” the publicist told him. “But all I’ve gotten so far is a rude letter back from the Make-A-Wish people.”