I set the chessboard aside. 'I can't play chess with her around, Moe.'
'Why not?'
The cowbell rang. We heard Lolly answer it. A second later she hobbled around the corner, yanking on a pair of faded cotton shorts. They became her. But then- oh, skip it.
'Doctor Adams?' she inquired, but the visitor had come on in anyway and now stood behind her, gaping. It was Joe. 'There's a john here to see you- oops! I mean, a man…'
'Thanks, Lolly. Hiya, Joe.'
'Doc. I gotta see you.'
'Sure. You remember Moe. Moe, Joe. Joe, Moe.'
'What is dis, the mojo song?' said Moe irritably as he put away the chessboard and pieces. 'Joe, want some food? Dried pears? Tofu? Celery? Wheatgerm muffins? Bean sprou-'
'No thanks,' said Joe, his mouth curled in revulsion, 'that stuff will kill you. Doc, I have to talk with you privately a minute. Got to. Sorry, Moe.'
I rose to go and looked at Lolly, who winked at me. It was not a teasy wink; it was a good-luck wink. She looked terrific in the shorts. The more clothes she put on, the better she looked, because I knew what she had on underneath the shorts. But I couldn't see those slinky panties. And I knew what was underneath those, but I couldn't see. That would be the ultimate striptease, I thought as I drew on my jacket, to have a girl come on the stage naked and get dressed, piece by piece.
'Nice meeting you, Lolly,' I said as we left through the airplane-style doorway. 'You've made my day.'
'You're in enough trouble at home,' Joe reminded me, pausing on the doorstep. He was looking at two old photographs that hung side by side on the kitchen wall above the tiny sink. 'Who the hell are those guys?'
'Two of the greatest chess masters who ever lived,' said Moe, who was showing us out. 'Great but tragic. On the left is the American Paul Morphy, the first true chess genius. On the right is Akiba Rubinstein, a rabbinical student from Lodz. Both of these men had their careers terminated by mental illness. Specifically, it was schizophrenia. Both died in asylums.'
'I might as well get to the point, since you're leading up to it so brilliantly,' I said, reaching for a taped oatmeal carton with a slot on top. It was heavy in my hand as I held it out to my brother-in-law. I rattled it under his nose.
'Give to mental-health research, Joe,' I said. When he dropped two quarters in I asked for more. He claimed he had no more change.
'It'll take folding green, Brindelli. Give!' I said.
'All I got's tens. I can't give a ten.'
'Ten bucks for leaving,' Moe announced, blocking the door. We skinned Joe for a tenner and then he and I left. Joe paused outside the old trailer, still in shock. Through the thin walls of the domicile we could hear Lolly cooing at Moe.
'Not now dear. Not now; I just have to see this second tape.'
And then came the voice of Mortimer Adler: '- and so to leave Reinhold Niebuhr for the moment and explore the existence of a Supreme Being as expressed by the systems philosopher Alfred North Whitehead-'
'C'mon, Moe,' cooed a sultry voice, husky with desire.
'Not now, Lolly; I've got to hear the rest of this lecture.'
'- in relation to what he calls absolute entities, which become the building blocks, the molecular and atomic structure, if you will, of his system…'
'Moo-00e…'
'Now as you'll recall, Russell and Moore attacked the dilemma differently… and- posing the dilemma, merely asking the question, you see, flips ordinary language analysis and logical positivism into the proverbial cocked hat-'
'Stop it, Lolly, or I'll send you to your room.'
Joe shook his head sadly.
'Can you believe it, Doc? Can you believe that dirty old man in there with that young piece?'
'You are in error. Moe is many things, some of them a little strange. But one thing he is not is dirty. Not in thought, word, deed, or body. And not in soul. Nobody is cleaner than Morris Abramson.'
'Yeah, but that girl, Doc. You should've seen what I saw as I walked in!'
'That and more. Hey Joe. Cut that out. We're in public view.'
'What? I jus- oh. Sorry,' he said, withdrawing his hands from his pockets. He got in his cruiser and followed me home. As I drove through the drizzle I reflected on luscious Lolly and couldn't help but think that Moe's philosophy worked.
Forty minutes later Mary slid back the rice-paper screen of the tiny teahouse, kicked off her slippers, and placed a rough clay pot on the low lacquered table near where Joe and I sat with robes of white raw silk wrapped around us and tied with big sashes. We didn't feel the cold damp. Silk is warmer than wool and as strong as steel, though most people cannot believe this. The pot was filled with boiling hot water which surrounded a bottle of saki. Mary sat down between us.
'Tell him, Joey.'
Joe poured a tiny cup of the hot wine and sipped it, staring out through the open wall at the gray-brown water of the pond, which rippled infinitely in the light rain.
'I've been thinking of what the killers have been searching for all along,' he said in a tired voice. It was weary- husky with emotional fatigue. 'From the start it interested me, of course. Mary can tell you how we were weaned on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. It's funny, but the event seemed to spark the Italian-American community instead of depress it. It was the thing that galvanized and united it. It made us sad, but it made us proud and defiant. So you can see how disastrous it would be if…'
He paused to let out a slow sigh.
'… if it were proved that they were guilty.'
Joe let the hot wine roll around on his tongue, swallowed it, then let out another deep breath as he shook his head slowly.
'I've already talked to Gus Giordano about it. That's where I went right after I left your place earlier. Hotfooted it right down to the North End to talk to Gus. Now what we think is… what we think, is that the thing the hoods are after, whatever it might be, is some kind of proof. Probably a document or photo-something. And what we're really afraid of more than anything is that old Dominic Santuccio had something in his files that he didn't tell Andy about before he died. And that something is pure dynamite. Probably Andy found out about it last week and so asked for the bundle back. I checked with the library; they hadn't opened it yet, just sent it back to Andy via Johnny Robinson. Maybe Andy was ordered to get the envelope back. Who knows?'
'Ordered? Who would order him to do that?'
'You know who.'
'The Mob? Oh, and that's why DeLucca's name upset you. You knew it was the Mob. Why would they be interested in evidence from the case? And how do we know the thing doesn't clear Sacco and Vanzetti?'
'Those two questions exactly were what was bothering me earlier when I was pacing around in your yard, while the rest of you ate lunch. They bothered me a lot. Okay. Either the Wise Guys want the damning evidence to blackmail the Italian-American community- to threaten to make it public if they're not paid off- or else they simply want to destroy it. I kind of suspect the latter possibility. Much as I hate the Mob, I admire the way they usually look out for the rest of us, especially us Calabrians and Sicilians. But you never know. For the past twenty years the Wise Guys have had everybody believing they don't traffic in hard drugs. Everybody thought it was the blacks and Hispanics. Not so. The Mob is heavy into horse. Why? Because it pays. Pays like there ain't no tomorrow. Now, if they knew the evidence or whatever in Andy's envelope could pay, they might steal it and hold it for ransom.'
'And if it got out? The effect on the North End?'
'Disaster. My talk with Gus confirmed that. It'd be a major blow to the community's morale. The thing would travel across America like a shock wave. And Italians wouldn't be the only ones hurt by it. The labor movement, the entire liberal left- hell. The neofascist bunch they've got in the White House now would get that much more
