Albergo came in after Maxey, and beside the town manager’s fifties gabardine, the little mafioso’s yellow cashmere was like a sunburst. The best day in summer does nothing to brighten Maxey’s long face. Bob Taft Senior would win hands-down in a smiling contest with Maxey; and indeed the town manager did look something like the late Mister Republican, only not so wild and reckless in his behavior. A bird of dull plumage but an honest man, so they said.

  “Hello again,” Albergo said to me with a just-so smile. He informed Maxey that we had already met, as if Maxey didn’t know it.

  “So I hear,” Maxey said going over to turn the hotplate on low. Gus had left it on high and the boiled-black coffee was jumping in the pot. Maxey moved the pot and warmed his hands over the dying heat. Finished with that, he picked up the coffee pot to look for cracks. Coffee pot and hotplate were town property after all.

  Albergo was exchanging pleasantries with faithful Gus. Gus shook hands with the hood. He wanted to shake that citizen’s soft white hand. I think he hated to let go. The fat slob eyed Albergo’s radiant coat, the bench-made shoes too thin for a Maine winter.

  “You want anything, just sing out, Mr. Albergo,” Gus said. “I mean it, sir.”

  “Sure thing …” Albergo paused. “Okay to call you Gus?”

  It certainly was. “That’s my name, Mr. Albergo,” the clown said happily. At least one convert had been made.

  I poked a hole in his euphoria by telling him to go back and check the harbor again. “Better do it. That suicide could have surfaced by now.”

  Albergo showed some distant concern. “Gee, I hate to hear that,” he said. “In a beautiful town like this why’d a person want to do a thing like that?” He was able to enjoy the joke without smiling, but it was still a good joke. Or maybe it wasn’t such a good joke after all; it hadn’t turned up the checkbook.

  Maxey stopped warming his skeletal hands to ask: “What’s this about a suicide?” Chapmans Corners was a famous tourist town and Maxey was publicity conscious.

  Gus jumped in to explain. “A hoax more than likely. Some fucking kid—excuse me, Mr. Albergo.”

  Joe the Jockey nodded his understanding of the policeman’s natural frustration.

  “I couldn’t get Greeley on the phone,” Gus dug in spitefully. “All I got was a busy so I had to leave my post and take it myself. Nothing.”

  “Check it again,” I said when my fat friend finished his Judas bit. Until things were settled I was still acting Chief. I let Gus know it by the tone of voice I used. “Now, Gus.”

  Gus hated to leave the pleasant atmosphere of cashmere coats and big-eared town managers. It took a hard look to send him on his way. If he listened at the door it wasn’t for long. A minute later there was the sound of Gus spinning wheels on the ice.

  Now we were alone, if you can call three people alone. It was what Maxey wanted, so I worried about Gus’s chances of promotion. “Here we are again for the first time,” I said to Maxey.

  “No need for that tone,” Maxey said, frowning more than usual. What he said next sounded like a form letter in a business manual. Maybe he got it in a manual. “It has come to my attention ...” He stopped. “Understand me, Greeley, Mr. Albergo has made no real complaint, formal or otherwise. He thinks there has been a misunderstanding ...”

  I looked at Albergo and asked: “Meaning that I gave him a hard time?”

  “Ah, listen, nothing bad as that,” Albergo said. “Like you say, a mistake.”

  “I want to tell you this, Greeley,” Maxey went on. “Mr. Albergo came to my office and asked to see me. He’s been open and honest with me about his past. That surprises you? I suppose it does. You should also know that Mr. Albergo received a Governor’s pardon for his, uh ... his past difficulties ...”

  Albergo wasn’t a bit embarrassed; in fact he laughed about it. “Difficulties my ass! Excuse the French, Mr. Maxey ... Tom.” Maxey winced at the Tom.

  Albergo spoke to me but the act was for Maxey. “I was a dumb wop jerk, a poor kid from a poor section of Boston and didn’t know any better. I got caught. A smarter guy wouldn’t of got caught”—Albergo’s laugh was loaded with irony—“so that proves what a lousy crook I was. Ah, that’s all in the past. But maybe the Chief don’t think so. How’s the other Chief, the old guy? Gee, a shame.”

  Maxey looked at me. “Very sick, I’m afraid,” he answered. “Chief Wesley Kinch was chief here for thirty years. If he ... the town will miss him.”

  “A nice guy, huh?” Albergo walked around as if he had never been inside a police station in his life. Nobody in the sheaf of wanted posters interested him. Mafia boys almost never end up on wanted posters: they don’t get caught or they get killed or they get caught and do their time with a closed mouth, confident that the Mob will look after them when they get out.

  Suddenly going over Maxey’s head he said to me: “Look, Chief, I don’t mind you being suspicious. You’re a cop—sorry, police officer—you’re just doing your job. I know how you guys operate. Once a crook always—right? Wrong! Not this old man ...”

  “You were a poor wop kid a minute ago,” I reminded him.

  “No need for racial slurs,” Maxey said piously. His indignation warmed up. “I won’t have it.”

  Albergo waved his hands like a blind man fighting his way through a cordon of pickpockets on West 42nd. “I’m the one said it first. Look, I’m a New England boy myself so we ought to get along.”

  “Us New England boys have to stick together,” I said to Maxey.

  “Too many years in New York is Greeley’s trouble,” Maxey declared. “Soured him on people. Just can’t believe somebody might want to help other people.”

  “That would be Mr. Albergo?”

  Maxey said it might be. “He’s here to make certain investments, to consider certain investments. You do agree the town could use the business.”

  “Whoa,” Albergo cut in. “Don’t go making me out a saint. I’m in this for the money. Make a little money, maybe help out a lot of nice people...”

  “Exactly,” the town manager said, putting me on notice to walk soft around Mr. Albergo. Here was this nice elderly Italian gentleman and here I was making sour faces.

  “You get that, do you?” Maxey wanted to know.

  “Aw, forget it.” Albergo dug Maxey in his frail ribs. “Look, I don’t want to make bad feeling for the Chief.”

  Maxey said I wasn’t Chief yet.

  Albergo shot a wristwatch out of a starched cuff and said he could make the bank if he hurried. This time his remark excluded me. “A couple things I got to discuss. What I mentioned before. You want to come along?”

  Maxey wasn’t ready to go that far, to be seen at the bank with an ex-con, and never mind the governor’s pardon. “You go ahead, Mr. Albergo,” he said. “Mr. Coles knows you’re coming. About the other matter? If you have trouble finding the right office space let me know.”

  “See you later, Chief,” Albergo said and went out.

  “A hell of a sweet guy, coming all the way from Boston to put us back on our feet.” Maxey didn’t kid, didn’t liked to be kidded, but I had to get in the dig.

  Even when he flares up, which isn’t often, he takes his time. First he poured a cup of bad coffee and looked as stern as a bishop about to cast out a devil. “All right, say what you have to say about Albergo. Don’t tell me he was in prison.”

  I said Joe Albergo was a hood, a thief, a killer and an associate of killers; everything rotten a man could be. “Screw the pardon, he’s more Mafia than he ever was. How do you think he got the pardon?”

  A pained look replaced the gloom on Maxey’s face. “Gosh,” he sighed. “The Mafia! In Chapmans Corners! To do what, Greeley?”

  “You tell me. The shoe factory went south, the mill closed down. Besides Albergo, do you see any other investors breaking the door down?”

  “You just made my point for me,” Maxey said. “The town can’t be too particular. Albergo mentioned several things to me. A plant to assemble vending machines. Cigarettes, candy, novelties. Also a hotel and restaurant supply business. You know how many tourist hotels there are in Maine.”

  “Rent our towels or we’ll kill your kid. All right they wouldn’t kill the kid, just hold him out the fifth floor window by the heels. What else does Albergo have in mind?”

  Maxey was sourly amused. “You’re talking nonsense.”

  I said: “All right, let them in, help them get set up. Just don’t start crying when the fun begins. Don’t tell me it can’t happen here. Bullshit! You read the papers. Look what happened in New Jersey.”

  “This isn’t New Jersey,” Maxey said smugly. “Albergo wouldn’t get away with anything illegal, not here. Anyway, how can we keep him out? If he wants to invest his money... it’s a free country.”

  “Make it tough for him. Freeze him out. Don’t rent. Don’t sell,” I urged. “He’ll get the message and move on to some other town.”

  “Some other town,” Maxey repeated. “And what happens to this town? Have you ever looked at the welfare rolls in this county? What you’re proposing is illegal. The man has rights.”

  Albergo’s rights didn’t press too heavy upon my brow. “Not to take over a whole town, he doesn’t,” I said. “They’ll start with the vending machines. Nothing wrong with vending machines if your salesmen don’t use baseball bats. Then they’ll go after the hotels, using this town as a base. After that it’ll be the gambling, the jukebox business, anything you want to name. All right, what’s so bad about gambling you want to know? Nothing as long as the Mob stays out of it, but they don’t. Later to buy off trouble they’ll move into politics, both parties, so they win either way. In the old days they paid off judges and DAs and senators. Now they’re more efficient: they elect them.”

  Maxey hadn’t bought my argument, but he was still shopping. “And this poor little town makes all that possible?”

  I didn’t mind the sarcasm. “They have to start somewhere. Maybe one town in every county in the state. In this town you’re Mr. Helpful. Maybe you’d be happier with Gus Irwin in the job?”

  For a moment it looked like pink slip time. I was gnawing pretty close to the bone, but I had to take the chance. Even if he survived, Kinch wouldn’t be coming back as Chief; and if Maxey fired me or put Gus Irwin in, or some new man, I wanted him to believe that I thought Albergo was behind it. It would make him look bad if he fired me and what I had said turned out to be true.

  Holding his temper in check, Maxey said he’d do what he thought was right. But I knew I had scored in the honesty circle. “I don’t like you much but that has nothing to do with it,” he told me quietly. “You say all these things about Albergo. What about proof?”

  How could I argue with that? The only way I could get Albergo out of town was to nail Kinch. With another man it might have been possible to tell him the facts, then freeze out Albergo and let Kinch fade into retirement. Not with Tom Maxey; this mournful Baptist wouldn’t go for that. He would put Kinch right up there beside Jesus Christ.

  “I just know from experience what the Mob’s like,” I said.

  Maxey finished the coffee and adjusted his scarf. “Proof. You show me proof and I’ll listen. The point is, you don’t have to like Albergo, I don’t have to like you. But you still have the job.” With the door half closed he added, “For now.”

  Chapter Eight

  NOT FOR A minute did I believe Gus when he radioed in to say he was still looking for the floater. Down at the dock there was an old ice-house where his cronies did more drinking than fishing. Gus would be there mixing cheap rye with apple wine, holding forth on the dismal state of affairs in the Chapmans Corners P.D. Officer Irwin was to the poolroom born; there was no poolroom in town, so the ice-house had to do.

  Better there than here; I told Gus to look hard. It was a license to drink in a nice, warm, fishy, boozy atmosphere, but Gus said, “All right for you to say that. I’m down here freezing my ass off.”

  Albergo must have made a good impression because they let him stay after closing hours at the bank. Coles, the manager, came out on the steps and shook hands with the little hood before he went across the street and got into the Cadillac and was driven all of a hundred yards to the first of the town’s three real estate offices.

  When I got tired of waiting for him to come out, I got the operator and told her to route all police calls to the barbershop for the next ten minutes. A nerve was jumping behind my left eye and I had the twingy pain that goes with it. When I haven’t shaved I have a habit of scratching the stubble and it does nothing but make me more irritable by the minute.

  At the barbershop Addy Lawes was telling three guys to get their reading done at the library. One of them was a tree surgeon named Mapes. The others were young Frenchmen who hadn’t worked since the shoe factory ran to Tennessee.

  “It’s not my business they don’t take Playboy at the library,” the barber was saying. “Take a shave, take a haircut, then you can read the magazines.’’

  They grunted at me and kept on goggling at the air-brushed nudes. “Just a shave,” I told the barber. “The hot towel hot as you can make it.”

  The hot towel felt good but Lawes couldn’t let me enjoy it in peace. He went around and started feeling the back of my neck. “You’re overdue for a trim,” he decided with the gravity of a doctor telling a patient he’ll have to get that growth removed or else. “I’ll just fix another towel and give you a nice trim.”

  Maybe in 1950 I’d be overdue; by today’s standards I was a clipped Prussian. “A trim, Addy,” I said.

  “No wonder business is punk, cops going hairy like frigging kids,” the barber complained. “Barbershop News says to change the name to hair stylist. I did that and business is still punk.”

  Mapes looked up from the centerfold of an ancient magazine. “Maybe it’ll get better when this Eyetalian cutter gets started. They say he’s going to hire on five hundred men the first month. They say it was Senator Muskie persuaded him to start up here.”

  The barber took away the towel and whipped lather in a mug. “That Polack,” he said. In Maine even the Republicans are secretly proud of having a native son running for President; the bitter ones like the barber can’t love him because he’s a Pole and a Catholic.

  “What do you think, Greeley?” Mapes wanted to know.

  “Don’t bother the paying customers,” the barber said, going over the dips and hollows with the razor.

  The phone rang and the barber said somebody named Nelson wanted to speak to me. I didn’t know the name. “Everything this place is but a barbershop,” the barber said.

  “I’m calling from a pay phone down the street,” this guy Nelson said. “Will explain later. Important. I’ll be parked in the police lot when you get there.”

  I didn’t ask his business. Before he spoke I thought it might be Eddie Bose. But the voice was straight, clear, efficient. “Five minutes,” I said, looking in the mirror while I wiped off the soap from around my ears.

  “Rush, rush—the whole world’s gone crazy,” the barber said.

  Going back to the station, I saw no sign of Albergo and his hoods. The caller I didn’t know was where he said he’d be; he got out of the car, a rental job by the look of it, and waited for me to get close. The car had Maine plates and was black and plain as an American car can be. He was pink and even more plain than the car; a big man about forty with his calories in control. His hair was the sandy kind that goes with the volleyball healthy face, and before he became an F.B.I. agent he might have been a star athlete at Fordham or one of the other F.B.I. prep schools.

  I waved him through the door and inside he showed me his ID, which gave his real name as James T. Burke. The handshake he gave me was the kind F.B.I. agents reserve for lesser breeds of lawman. We sat down on both sides of the desk and he asked me how Kinch was. Displaying crisp sympathy, he said, “I’m with the Portland office. The Boston office called us. It’s about a Mafia hood, an underboss named Joseph Albergo. They call him Joe the Jockey.”

  “I wondered what he was,” I said, wondering how much this guy knew about Kinch. Maybe it was too late to help the poor bastard. “Albergo’s here. I’ve seen him, spoken to him. Didn’t like what I saw, so I tried to give him a gentle shove. I thought maybe he was in the confidence game.”

  Agent Burke shook his sandy head at my country innocence. I lit a cigarette and pushed the pack toward him, but he didn’t smoke. “You ought to give it up,” he said. “Boston doesn’t know what Albergo’s up to. But he’s up to something or he wouldn’t be here. We’d like to ask for your cooperation.”

  “Sure,” I said. “You want me to let him alone, is that it?” I wanted him to know that here was no dumb yokel cop.

  Burke smiled like a dog owner pleased with his pooch’s first trick. “Exactly,” he said. “Albergo’s here for no good and I’m here to find out what it is. The man’s a dangerous criminal; no need to tell you that. We’re asking you to keep away from him, don’t do anything to make him nervous. Sooner or later he’ll make a move—Boston has information the Del Vecchio organization has plans to move north—and maybe then we’ll nail him.” Burke gave a dry smile. “We’ve been after him an awful long time.”

  I had a question. “What if he doesn’t make a move? It could go on for weeks, maybe months.”

  Burke didn’t think so. “But even if it does, let him alone.” Another dry smile creased the pink steam-room face. “Unless of course he tries to rob the bank or kills someone.” The F.B.I. man shook his head. “It’s nothing like that. I’ll be watching every move he makes. My cover will be George Nelson, salesman working out of Portland, a new company. Where’s a good motel I can put up? I want to tell you, Greeley, the Bureau appreciates this. Sometimes local law enforcement officers kind of resent us.”

 

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