22
At about the time Gloria died, a black limousine pulled up to an iron-gated courtyard off St. Claude Street in New Orleans’s French Quarter. The driver’s window rolled down; the uniformed guard checked out the driver and the three passengers and waved the limousine in.
The driver parked at the top of an oval driveway next to a three-story Spanish neoclassical building, replete with terracotta-tiled roof, wrought-iron balconies, and creeping ivy. Two bodyguards walked Joe Graham up the stone steps and into the building.
The floors were highly polished octagonal black-and-white tiles. The walls were painted chalk white and held large gilt-framed oil paintings of New Orleans street scenes. A marble staircase, flanked by a wrought-iron railing, curved up to the right, and the bodyguards led Graham up these stairs. Video cameras were recessed on swivels in the plaster ceiling.
A guard sat at an antique table at the top of the stairs, the bulge of a pistol prominent under his jacket. He nodded to the two guards, pressed the button on the intercom, and said that Mr. Bascaglia’s two o’clock appointment had arrived. A feminine voice replied that he should be sent right in.
They walked past the table, down the hall to a large mahogany door. The first bodyguard knocked. There was an electric buzz, the lock sprang open, and they were in a narrow waiting room decorated in a blue Napoleonic theme.
An attractive older woman in a blue business suit sat at another antique table. She smiled at them, knocked on a door behind her, stuck her head in, and announced them.
“You can go right in,” she said.
Carmine Bascaglia sat behind a large table. Behind him, a floor-to-ceiling window of thick bulletproof glass allowed a splendid view of old New Orleans, from the private courtyard garden directly below to the shabbily genteel old buildings of the French Quarter down the street.
Bascaglia’s desk was spare except for two stacks of paper-one on the left, one on the right-a gold fountain pen, a pitcher of water, and a single glass.
One wooden chair, smaller and plainer than the Queen Anne Bascaglia sat on, had been set directly in front of the desk. The walls of the office were covered with thick gold-and-blue wallpaper. Portraits of Spanish ladies, also gilt-framed, hung on the walls.
Bascaglia looked tall even sitting down. He wore an elegantly tailored slate gray suit with subtle white striping, an off-white Italian shirt with cuff links, and a blood red tie. His gray hair, starting to thin, was brushed straight back and he wore gold-rimmed glasses on his Roman nose.
The bodyguards led Graham to the chair in front of the desk and then took their places in the corners.
“I have fifteen minutes for you, Mr. Graham,” he said without introduction. “I will begin. One: You think you are a funny son of a bitch, but you are not a funny son of a bitch.”
He paused to let Graham agree.
Graham nodded.
“Two: When we want comedians, we hire them and they perform in nightclubs. They tell humorous jokes and we laugh. They do not tell allegorical anecdotes in restaurants or shove people into rivers.”
He paused again and stared at Graham.
Graham nodded.
“Three: I have no sense of humor. I don’t have the time for one. Neither do you. Are we in agreement?”
“Yes, we are, Mr. Bascaglia,” Graham said.
“Good,” Bascaglia said. “The only reason I gave you an appointment is that Dominic Merolla requested it. I required that you represent your organization because I wanted to tell you personally that the antics in San Antonio are to stop forthwith.”
“There won’t be any more, Mr. Bascaglia.”
“Now, what seems to be the problem, Mr. Graham?”
Graham felt butterflies in his stomach the way he used to when he was sent to the Mother Superior’s office as a kid, except worse. The nun might hit you with a ruler; Carmine Bascaglia might make you a concrete lawn ornament at the bottom of the Mississippi.
Graham said, “One of your subordinates in Texas, a Mr. Foglio, is engaged in business practices that are proving harmful to interests we represent.
“Mr. Foglio’s business is to make money,” Bascaglia answered. “I assume you’re referring to that amusement park?”
“Candyland, yeah.”
‘”Joe Foglio is a contractor on the project,” Bascaglia said. “It’s all aboveboard.”
Graham coughed and said, “As a matter of fact, sir, there’s quite a bit that’s uh, below-board.”
“Let’s not play games,” Bascaglia said. “In recent years, we have made a successful effort to move our monies into legitimate businesses such as construction, trucking, entertainment, and various investments. If Joe Foglio traded on certain names to acquire business
…”
Bascaglia held his palms up.
“Our client is happy for Mr. Foglio’s various companies to have the work,” Graham continued. “They’d be happier, though, if he’d stop robbing them blind.”
“I don’t make it my habit to pry into the details of my associates’ businesses, and Mr. Foglio’s profit margins are a detail best left to him.”
Graham started to rub his artificial fist into his real palm. He thought for a minute and then said, “Years ago, I worked for a guy who owned a chain of movie theaters. He hired me to see how much the staff was stealing. And he told me, ‘Joe, if they’re just stealing supper, let ’em. I don’t want to know… It turned out that they were stealing dinner money. They were happy; he was happy. But Joey Foglio is stealing supper, lunch, breakfast, midday snacks, the table, the chairs, the cabinets, and the kitchen linoleum.
“Sir, when the old men threw Joey out of New York, you took him on because you thought he could make money, I know that. But now he’s got his hands around the throat of the golden goose. If that’s not enough for you, he’s also ordered a hit on a young woman who isn’t involved in your business, and he’s aligned himself-and you, I guess-against the direct interests of the Merolla family.”
Graham saw a scary, cold look come across Bascaglia’s eyes.
“What’s the Merolla family got to do with this?” he asked.
“The grandkid is Jack Landis’s partner.”
“The grandson isn’t in the family business,” Bascaglia said.
“His grandfather loves him, anyway.”
Bascaglia took his sweet time thinking this over while Graham pictured chunks of himself floating into the Gulf of Mexico.
“I’ve always believed,” Bascaglia finally said, “that violence is the first recourse of the foolish man and the last resort of the wise man.”
Graham was relieved to hear that.
“I don’t want a war with the Merolla family,” Bascaglia concluded.
“No one’s talking war here, sir.”
Bascaglia seemed to be thinking out loud when he said, “But I can’t take Joe Foglio’s business away from him.”
Graham was thinking that a man rumored to have arranged the assassination of a United States President could probably blow off a bum like Joey Beans, but he didn’t voice the opinion.
“We believe that there’s a lot of room for negotiation here,” Graham said. “Funny, but it all kind of hinges on this woman who says Landis raped her.”
“Paula somebody.”
“Polly Paget, yeah.”
“How is she central to this dispute?”
“She’s got FCN by the short hairs, and if she takes the company down, everybody loses,” Graham explained.
