Murder Keeps A Secret Page 15

  “Sicilian, I believe,” Cynthia replied.

  “Have you decided on a wine?” the maitre d’ demanded, returning to their table.

  Reuben normally would have told the headwaiter to come back, but he decided to be pacific and hurriedly opened the wine list. Sure that Cynthia was right—the food was Sicilian, or at least Sicilian-American—he ordered a bottle of Corvo.

  “What are your specials tonight?” Frost asked when the maitre d’ returned with the green-colored bottle of Sicilian white wine.

  “No specials. It’s all on the menu.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you know what you want?”

  Cynthia ordered the sardines in white wine and the chicken with eggplant; Reuben asked for caponata and the pork described as scaloppe di maiale al Marsala.

  “The entrées come with spaghetti. You want that?”

  Both turned him down.

  “French fries?”

  Again negative.

  Their ordering—and their vetoing—completed, Reuben and Cynthia looked around. Here and there were couples who were probably Upper East Side New Yorkers out for Sunday supper. But they were not in the majority. Most of the customers were in groups of four, six or eight and bore the unmistakable signs of the outer boroughs: tacky composition suits on the backs of the stocky men; teased arrangements of dyed hair offsetting the jewelry and heavy makeup of the women.

  “I hate to be snotty …” Reuben said.

  “… I know what you’re going to say, Reuben. And you’re right,” his wife interrupted.

  “The bridge and tunnel crowd, straight in from Queens, Brooklyn and New Jersey. Except, my God, look over there.” Frost nodded to a table across the room.

  “That’s an odd one, isn’t it?” Cynthia said, startled, as was her husband, to see Stanley and Donna Knowles.

  “You suppose they’re regulars here?” Reuben asked.

  “Or …”

  “… that they’re friends of Tom Giardi, too?”

  They both pondered the meaning of a link between the two publishers and Giardi.

  “I’m sure it’s just a Sunday night hangout for them,” Reuben said. “Don’t they live near here?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, eat your sardine and let’s not think about it,” Reuben told his wife as they turned to the bounteous appetizers that had been put in front of them.

  As they ate, the waiters gathered in a parade and brought a lighted birthday cake to a youngish woman sitting with what the Frosts guessed to be her husband and three other couples. The waiters joined in singing “Happy Birthday” and those in the room applauded. A bottle of spumante and crystal flutes were produced for the group, adding to an already large collection of empty glasses and wine bottles on the table.

  Boisterous toasts were proposed by the men—beefy, as so many of the customers were—to the accompaniment of giggles by the overdressed women. Then a tall, dark man with abundant black hair came to the table and shook hands with each of the men. There was more rowdy laughter and shouting back and forth; the man and the celebrants were clearly on familiar terms. He lingered for a few moments, resplendent in his well-cut brown suit, and then returned to a round table in the corner occupied by five other men, all eating heartily.

  “I’ll bet that’s Giardi,” Frost said. They both tried to get a better look at the proprietor, but their view was cut off by his table companions.

  As they continued to try to get a view of the man, their waiter brought their entrées, the plates groaning with large portions of chicken and pork.

  “You know, I’m very relieved about Alan,” Reuben said as they dutifully attacked their overflowing plates. “I mean, about the murder part. The drug business is very sad, but Luis seems to think there’s a chance he can get off with strict supervision at Fairhaven.”

  “I don’t even like to think about it.”

  “It’s rather pathetic, you know. The boy felt he couldn’t call his mother last night, even though by now she’s an experienced criminal lawyer. I know you’ve expressed regrets—and so have I—about not having children. But when you see the messes kids today can get into, we’re probably very lucky.” As he talked, Frost toyed with his entrée, like a child forced to eat broccoli. His meal was not very good, the Marsala doing nothing to resuscitate the dry, overcooked pieces of pork over which it had been poured.

  Still surreptitiously watching the owner’s table, they saw Giardi leave his gregarious companions to go over to talk to the Knowleses. He stood over their table and engaged them in animated conversation. Then he grabbed a chair from a nearby table and sat down. The talk was intense, with much gesticulating by Giardi. Stanley Knowles signed a credit-card slip as they talked, after which he and Donna got up and took their leave amid profuse embraces and a kiss for Donna.

  “I think they’re coming over here,” Frost said. Stanley Knowles had spotted the Frosts as he stood up and now, with his wife following behind, crossed the room.

  “Paisano!” he said, pumping Reuben’s hand. “I had no idea you loved good Italian cooking. Except I should have known, Reuben, that you love everything!”

  “Do you come here often, Stanley? This is our first time.”

  “I can’t believe it. I know something the Frosts don’t—this place is wonderful.”

  Knowles’s boosterism would have done a public relations flack proud.

  “We love the food,” Donna Knowles chimed in. “We never eat at home, you know. So we’re here a lot.”

  Both of the Knowleses, despite their hearty enthusiasm, struck Reuben as being nervous. Their bonhomie seemed just a trifle off.

  “Stanley, was that the padrone you were talking to?” Frost asked.

  “Tommy? Oh, yes. Good guy. Third generation in the restaurant business. His grandfather was a bootlegger during Prohibition. So was his father. They started serving food to the customers in their speakeasy and’ve been doing it ever since. Moved up here from Little Italy sometime in the fifties.”

  “You haven’t eaten very much, Mr. Frost,” Donna observed, looking at Reuben’s picked-over plate.

  “Moderation in all things, I’m afraid,” Frost replied. “We had a big lunch.” He was not about to engage Donna Knowles in a debate over whether the scaloppe di maiale al Marsala was execrable or not.

  The busy waiters had been bumping into the Knowleses as they stood in front of the Frosts’ table. Since there was no place for Donna and Stanley to sit, and no reason for them to, they left, heartily endorsing Giardi’s, and expressing the hope they would see the Frosts again very, very soon.

  Reuben and Cynthia would have followed their usual custom of passing up dessert, except that they wanted to observe the restaurant—and its owner—further. So Reuben ordered a tartufo and Cynthia a zabaglione with strawberries.

  When their desserts arrived, Reuben inspected his tartufo—a frozen block of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, with a raspberry sauce—and told his wife that it “proved his theory.”

  “You mean your theory that all tartufi are made by the Mafia?”

  “Yes. Look at this. It’s exactly the same as the tartufi I’ve seen people eat in Italian restaurants all over Manhattan. Exactly the same! Hard, frozen ice cream with the same sauce. There has to be a Mafiosi grandmother who gets this stuff into every restaurant. You’d probably get your kneecaps broken if you tried to make your own.”

  “Whatever it’s like, it has to be better than this,” Cynthia declared. “My zabaglione was made about three days ago and has been sitting next to the onions in the refrigerator ever since. Reuben, it’s truly awful.”

  Her husband commiserated with her, but didn’t help matters by recalling the truly ethereal, fresh zabaglione they had shared in a tiny out-of-the way restaurant in Taormina on a Sicilian tour two years before.

  Seeing that his reminiscing was doing little for his wife’s good humor, he turned her attention to Stanley and Donna Knowles. “You know, I’m mys
tified. That meal we had at the Reuff Dinner wasn’t great, but Donna Knowles really complained about it. I distinctly remember her griping about the size of the portions. She said she was very uncomfortable eating a lot. And then she and Stanley come to a pig-palace like this.”

  “I’m sure you noticed they both had the side orders of spaghetti and french fries we passed up,” Cynthia said.

  “No. But you’re always more observant than I am.”

  While they were talking, Reuben saw Tommy Giardi get up from his table and go to the headwaiter’s station. He looked down the reservation list, consulted with the maitre d’ and turned to look directly at the Frosts. Almost at once he was in front of them, casting a shadow over their table.

  “Mr. Frost?”

  “Yes?”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, yes, fine,” Reuben said, grateful that the proprietor had not seen the plate of barely touched food that their waiter had removed.

  “Good. We aim to keep our customers happy. By the way, aren’t you a friend of Grace Mann’s?” Giardi looked straight at Reuben as he asked the question.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You were also a friend of David Rowan, right?”

  “That’s also true.”

  “I hear you’re playing detective. Going to solve the big mystery the police—and the media—can’t get their hands around.”

  “Um … I don’t know what to say. David was my godson and his father, Harrison, is an old friend from years back. I’ve tried to do what I can, but detective is a pretty strong word.”

  “I don’t know. Pretty good word, I’d’ve thought. Better than gumshoe, or snoop or busybody.” If Giardi was making a joke, he did not show it. “But I’m delighted you’re here at my restaurant.”

  “We eat out a lot and are always looking for new spots,” Reuben said weakly.

  “Well, we’ve been here since they took the Third Avenue El down, so it’s taken you a long time to discover us. But better late than never. Can I offer you an after-dinner drink?”

  “Oh, no, we were just leaving.”

  “I insist. It’s wonderful to be discovered by someone after all these years. What’ll it be?”

  Reuben turned to Cynthia, but got a totally impassive response.

  “Very well, I’ll have a sambuca,” Reuben said. Cynthia nodded her head and said she would have one as well.

  “Con mosche?” Giardi asked.

  “Senz’altro,” Frost answered. His amateur Italian brought a slight smile to Giardi’s face—his first—and he commanded a waiter to bring the drinks complete with coffee-bean “flies”—mosche. He continued to loom over their table until the waiter had returned with the drinks.

  “To your continued good health,” he said as the Frosts dutifully began sipping them.

  “Thank you very much,” Reuben said.

  Giardi showed no signs of leaving, until the maitre d’ came and whispered in his ear.

  “Where?” Giardi asked. The headwaiter gestured toward a table occupied by an older, obviously Manhattan couple, next to Giardi’s own. The owner turned, without another word to the Frosts, and went to confront the couple. Reuben and Cynthia watched closely.

  “What’s your problem?” Giardi demanded.

  The Frosts overheard the woman complain, in an indignant voice, about the heavy cigar smoke emanating from Giardi’s table.

  “They’re my friends,” Giardi said in a tough, cold voice. “And I own this place. So if they want to smoke cigars they can.”

  The man at the complaining table said nothing; the Frosts imagined him to be frozen with fear. His wife, on the other hand, was undaunted and registered her complaint again, with even more indignation.

  “I don’t think you like it here,” Giardi said. He beckoned to the headwaiter and asked him to bring the couple’s check, though they had scarcely begun their main course. Giardi slapped it down on the table and asked the dissidents to leave, as one of the busboys, at Giardi’s beckoning, began to remove their dinner dishes.

  The man at the table, by now white and shaking with either fear or anger, bowed to the inevitable, paid the check and fled with his wife as fast as decency would allow. Giardi stayed with them until they were out the front door. He then returned to his table and regaled his vociferous cigar-smoking companions with the tale. Their laughter was loud and ugly.

  “Nice fellows,” Frost said. “Let’s us get out of here before we’re invited to leave, too.” He got the check from the maitre d’ and paid with his American Express card. Signing the American Express voucher, he carefully removed and tore up the carbons between the copies.

  “I normally regard people who do this as paranoid old ladies,” Reuben explained to his wife. “Scared stiff somebody will use the carbons to make a false chit. But I’m on their side tonight.”

  As the Frosts walked toward the front door, Giardi loomed up behind them.

  “Thank you very much for coming, Mr. Frost,” he said, ignoring Cynthia. “Happy gumshoeing.”

  “Good night, Mr. Giardi,” Reuben said, very formally and without shaking hands.

  When they got home, Reuben and Cynthia were still upset. They did not talk about Giardi right away; they were more interested in the surprise appearance of the Knowleses at the restaurant.

  “Maybe it really is a neighborhood spot for them,” Reuben said. “Maybe Donna modifies her birdlike eating habits when confronted with that ‘traditional and discriminating’ Giardi food. But maybe there’s more to it than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, we know Stanley has money troubles. And Luis Bautista says Giardi handles a lot of gangster money. Maybe he’s a silent partner in the Hammersmith Press.”

  “Publishing’s not a very likely investment for gangsters, do you think?”

  “A lot of funny people have put money into publishing. Besides, as I understand it, organized crime types are willing to invest in almost anything as long as it’s legitimate and gives them a chance to launder their money.

  “Or there’s the insurance policy angle,” Reuben went on. “Maybe Giardi supplied a hit man so that Stanley could collect on David’s insurance.”

  “It seems absurd,” Cynthia said.

  “The whole mess is absurd, starting with pushing a grown man out a window,” Reuben replied testily.

  “I think it’s time we sorted our slips of paper once more,” Cynthia said. She went to the library and returned with a new supply of legal foolscap which she tore into quarters, as she had four nights earlier, and wrote names on the torn slips.

  “You remember the combinations we put together then,” she said, laying out the pieces on the coffee table.

  “Now, let’s assume we can eliminate Alan—and his mother. We still have some new combinations. We have Peter Jewett to add. Then, after what we saw tonight, we can link up Stanley Knowles and Tom Giardi.”

  “Fair enough. But just for fun, lay out slips for those who might have done it all by themselves.”

  “Fine. Let me get more paper.”

  With new supplies in hand, Cynthia’s display eventually looked like this:

  MARIETTA AINSLEE RALSTON FORTES

  GRACE MANN TOM GIARDI*

  STANLEY KNOWLES RALSTON FORTES

  HORACE JENKINS RALSTON FORTES

  STANLEY KNOWLES TOM GIARDI*

  STANLEY KNOWLES TOM GIARDI*

  RALSTON FORTES PETER JEWETT

  Reuben surveyed the display. “What are the stars for?” he asked, indicating the asterisks after Giardi’s name.

  “I thought we’d agreed that Giardi, if he’s the guilty party, might have had one of his gangster friends do the job. One or two of those cigar smokers we saw tonight perhaps.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s an awfully big chart, Reuben,” Cynthia said. “It’s discouraging.”

  “Yes, it covers the whole coffee table. But I’ll leave you with just one question before we go to bed.”
>
  “What’s that?”

  “Is it big enough?”

  19

  Missing Parts

  Cynthia Frost, always alert and enthusiastic in the morning, seemed even more so on the Monday morning after the night at Giardi’s.

  “You’re running around here like a dervish,” her slow-rising husband complained.

  “I’ve got a lot to do today,” she said.

  “A new Pirandello festival?”

  “No, not a new Pirandello festival. Just a lot of boring things I’ve been neglecting. Good-bye.”

  For all intents and purposes the new week began for Reuben two hours later, when Lucy Wyecliffe called.

  “I have some information for you, Mr. Frost,” she said. “We’ve been working very hard—overtime all weekend—since I talked to you, trying to put the Ainslee papers back into some sort of order and trying to find if anything’s missing. We finished up an hour ago.”

  Frost was bursting to find out more details, but first had to humor Miss Wyecliffe as she gave her speech once again about the folly of not copying the Ainslee papers before they had been turned over to David Rowan.

  “All the boxes relating to Mr. Justice Ainslee’s service in the Senate are accounted for,” she said, finally. “However, there are three case files missing. Of course, we have no idea what was in those files. Without copies, you know, we just draw a blank.”

  “I understand, Miss Wyecliffe,” Frost said, heading off a second lecture on the merits of photocopying.

  “The case files missing are all from the nineteen seventy-two/seventy-three term of the Supreme Court. I have the names if you would like them.”

  Frost wrote down the case names as Miss Wyecliffe read them to him: United States v. Rodriguez, Cleveland School District v. Henshaw and Carrymore v. United States.

  “Do you have the citations?”

  “Not right at my fingertips.”

  “That’s all right, I can get them.”