“What’s the difference? You’re out of the game, buddy. You played well, but I’m putting you on the DL. It’s not your fight.”
He looked at me with what started as a scowl, but relaxed when it pulled the stitches.
“It’s more my fight than it is yours.”
The words were stronger, and as I looked at him, he had a point.
“The other witness runs a Chinese herbal medicine shop on Tyler Street.”
Harry shook his head. “Not good.”
“Why not? I’ve got to do it sooner or later.”
“Later. Give it a couple of days. They’ll be expecting you now. You’ll be playing into their hands. You won’t get anything now, except maybe hurt.”
“Really. Any other reason?”
“Yeah. In a couple of days I’ll go with you. You’d be as lost in Chinatown as I would in Puerto Rico. When’s the trial?”
“Hasn’t been set yet. The DA’d have it marked up tomorrow if she could. We’ve got a few weeks. I don’t know about you going with me. They don’t seem to value Chinese life. I don’t want to lose you. Thanks-giving’d never be the same.”
“I’m serious, Mike. It’s my fight. I’ve seen a lot of my friends bend under their power. I’ve always told myself I’m a different kind of Chinese. I’m an MIT Chinese. Different world. It’s the same world, Mike. No more hiding places.”
I caught a look at the clock. I could just make the Marliave by noon.
“Gotta run, Harry. Whatever you need, let me know.”
The last words I heard on the way out the door were, “Call me, Mike. You need me.”
No argument.
11
The Marliave is a tiny but authentic chunk of Rome, ripped out of the eternal city and dropped unspoiled onto a corner of the block between School and Bromfield Streets. The stone steps leading up to the entrance once led to the Royal Gardens when King George’s royal governors were housed a block away.
Noon was a memory, but a recent memory, by the time I climbed those steps to the entrance.
The line of customers at the door suffered not gladly my weaving and squeezing my way close to the front of the line. I had a nodding acquaintance with the maitre d’ from past occasions, which was usually good for a smile, a handshake, and a prediction of twenty minutes to the next table.
I caught his eye and mouthed the words, “Is Mr. Devlin here yet?”
I think he misunderstood and thought I said the pope was awaiting my arrival. He moved the head-of-the- liners out of my way and led me like the returning son to a small upstairs chamber in the back.
The room had the same Romanesque charm that pervaded the Marliave. It held one single table at which were gathered Lex Devlin, a dapper little dude of about the same vintage, whom I assumed to be Conrad Munsey, and a third, gaping chair.
Lex acknowledged my arrival with an eyebrow and a nod toward the chair, which I took as an invitation to join the fun. When he introduced me as “the late Mr. Knight,” I realized that “noon” did not mean “or so, at your convenience.” I was gratified, however, that though he may never use it to my face, he still remembered my name.
Conrad Munsey, our dinner companion, was another piece of work. Judging from his sitting position, I estimated that he’d come about up to my chin. He had bright eyes and a sharp little moustache. In fact, everything about him, from his salt-and-pepper hair, which looked as if it were trimmed hourly, to his diminutive but perfectly formed body, which he had tucked into a tidy, dark three-piece suit with the correct, conservative tie, bespoke nobody’s fool.
I sensed comfort and probably more than mutual respect between Mr. Devlin and Mr. Munsey. I remembered Mr. Devlin saying they “go back.”
I shook hands with Mr. Munsey and received a menu from the waiter. I was about to open it, when a red- haired man of about fifty years swept in from the kitchen and snatched the menus out of the hands of the three of us. Judging from the fine Italian wool of his suit, I figured he was not the busboy.
“Mr. Devlin, you never need a menu. What do you feel like? A little veal? A little pasta first, maybe a white sauce? You like my antipasto. I’ll fix it myself. What do you think? You leave it to me?”
I saw the softest side of Lex Devlin I’d ever seen when he smiled and touched our host on the arm.
“We couldn’t be in better hands, Vincenzo.”
That widened the smile. Vincenzo gestured to the waiter and mentioned a particularly good vino bianco.
“Whoa, Vincenzo. No wine for this gentleman and myself. Connie, you suit yourself.”
I didn’t remember being consulted on the wine refusal, but apparently I was riding shotgun on Mr. Devlin’s wagon. No sweat. If the boss was suggesting that I had two days’ clear-headed work to do that afternoon, he was reading my mind.
When the room cleared and Vincenzo delicately closed the door to the outside room, Lex leaned across the table.
“Let’s talk, Connie. There’s a rumbling in the hills. I don’t like it. I wanted to see if you’re picking anything up.”
Mr. Munsey’s eyes were crackling, and his lips did something that put his moustache at a tilt, but nothing came out.
Mr. Devlin sat back. “You have no problem with Mr. Knight, Connie. We’re on the same side. He needs to know where the shots are coming from, too. They could blindside either one of us.”
Munsey took a couple of seconds on that one, but Mr. Devlin’s confidence apparently won out. There was no one else in the room, but Mr. Munsey leaned in a bit before he spoke.
“Something’s cooking. I’m getting more uncomfortable by the day. I remember the last time, and so do you. What tipped you this time, Lex?”
“The right honorable Mrs. Lamb. First she wanted to hang Bradley’s fleece on the courthouse door. That was honest ambition. She’d convict Kermit the Frog if it’d get her to the statehouse. That side of her I believed. This morning she calls with an offer of a reduced charge. No headlines. Could even look like a slap in the face to the Chinese community-and every other minority community. And if you read what I think you do, you know that the whole Chinese community is torn up over this murder. That move didn’t come from our Mrs. Lamb, Connie. Her lips were moving, but someone was feeding her the words. If it’s true, I need to know who. I thought maybe those foxy ears of yours might have picked up something in the wind.”
The moustache curled into a foxy grin.
“Could be that she heard that the redoubtable Lex Devlin was leading the defense, and she decided to withdraw to safer shoals.”
Mr. Devlin leaned across the table. Only his eyes were smiling. “Could be that you’re full of enough bovine feces to fertilize Ireland, Mr. Munsey.”
They were six inches apart. “That would be Northern Ireland, Mr. Devlin. You could handle that rowdy southern province with no help from anyone.”
For the second time since I’d known him, a smile cracked Mr. Devlin’s lips. “It’s not much of a compliment, Mr. Munsey, but I’ll give it to you anyway. You’re a credit to your race.”
“I’ll say the same for you, Mr. Devlin. And heaven knows your race needs all the credit it can get.”
I could be wrong, but as I listened to this verbal tennis match, I could swear that the brogues of these two Boston-bred colonials thickened progressively, one from Dublin, the other from Ulster. It was the arrival of three antipastos in the hands of Vincenzo that called a halt. When the door closed, and the antipastos had been sampled, the smiles were gone.
“What have you heard, Connie?”
“Nothing concrete, Lex. Let me tell you what I’ve noticed. The boys have been restless. The morning that
