My Honorable Brother

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, institutions, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Bob Weintraub

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Yucca Publishing

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-018-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-031-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  FOR SANDRA, MY EVERYTHING

  1

  AT THE LAST MINUTE he decided to put on his sweat suit and go for a jog before breakfast. Doug Fiore knew he had to shower anyway before meeting with the judge at two o’clock, so it made sense to get his exercise out of the way now. In the bathroom, he wet the two spots on his face, one on his cheek and the other on his chin, where he nicked them while shaving too quickly, carefully pushing away the toilet paper he used to stop the bleeding.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said out loud when the second cut occurred, and Grace knocked on the door, reminding him that Susan, their fourteen-year-old daughter was still in her room. His foul language was a response to knowing that the Columbia Law School alumni magazine was doing an article on him and sending a photographer to his office at Walters, Cassidy & Breen the next day to take pictures. He didn’t want them spoiled by what might look like adolescent zits.

  When he went downstairs, Grace was at the refrigerator getting the eggs and vegetables she needed to make Doug his regular Sunday morning omelet. The frying pan on the stove was filled with onion slices sizzling in melted butter.

  “Honey,” he said, “would you hold up making breakfast for about an hour. I’m going to do my running and then I’ll clean up and get dressed. I’ve got to see Tom Raymond this afternoon about his case.”

  “This afternoon? What time are you talking about, Doug?”

  “He said he could do it at two, and that would give us a couple of hours to work before the Patriots come on at four. He never misses one of their games.”

  Grace stopped what she was doing and looked at him, her hands moving to her hips. “Have you forgotten that we’re going to my brother’s party this afternoon and we have to leave here by one o’clock?”

  “Oh hell, I thought that was next week.”

  “No, it’s today. I reminded you a few days ago, right here in the kitchen.”

  “Well, I got it mixed up. Damn.” Doug disliked going to one of Grace’s brother’s parties as much as he disliked Walter, her brother. “Don’t call me Wally,” as he often referred to him, drank too much too quickly and inevitably started to rant about the “good old days” when Reagan was in the White House and how he saved America from everything that was evil, both foreign and domestic.

  “Tom’s case is going before the Ethics Commission on Thursday and I really have to spend more time with him to be sure we’re ready. Your brother’s not going to miss me if I’m not there.”

  “That’s not the point,” Grace answered. “Walter invites these same people all the time—you know that—and you weren’t there for the July cookout. They’ll think we’re separated or something if I’m alone again. It wouldn’t matter what excuse I gave for you, Doug. It’ll be embarrassing for me.”

  Fiore went over and embraced his wife who willingly moved into his arms. He thought about the wonderful time they had the night before, dining at the new restaurant in the Biltmore Hotel, enjoying the hit musical at the Trinity Theatre and later, back home, having an exciting hour of sex. Even though he was having an affair with one of his law partners at that time, he loved Grace very much and tried his best to keep her happy.

  “Okay, honey,” he said. “I’m not going to spoil your day. The judge will have to find some time for me after work one night this week. Or maybe he can see me tonight, after seven, when the game’s over. We’ll definitely be home by then. I’ll call him now.”

  At breakfast, Grace asked Doug to tell her what Tom Raymond’s case was about. As soon as he began to speak, his voice became louder without his realizing it. “It’s about how easy it is for a piece of trash to malign a good man and smear his name in the community.”

  “Please, Doug,” she interrupted, “spell it out for me, but don’t get upset.”

  “I’ll try to make a long story short,” he answered, then paused several seconds before continuing. “Tom was the judge in a criminal case involving this guy named Blackburn. Tom found against him and sentenced him to three years in jail. He’s still serving time now. A few months ago Blackburn got to see the warden and accused Tom of offering to throw out his case if he came up with five thousand dollars. Blackburn said he couldn’t put his hands on the money at the time. The warden didn’t believe a word of it but felt he had to cover himself and reported it to the Attorney General’s office.”

  “How would Tom ever come to be alone with this Blackburn person to even offer a deal like that?” Grace asked.

  “Good question, just what the A.G.’s office wanted to know. The answer is that Blackburn said he did it through Tom’s clerk, a guy named Timilty, who called him on the phone during the trial.”

  “Did the clerk confirm it?”

  Doug shook his head. “He neither confirmed it nor denied it. Unfortunately for Tom, the clerk had died several months earlier, so what Blackburn said couldn’t be refuted. I suspect that miserable son of a bitch heard about Timilty, waited a while and then went to the warden with his story. Anyway, the A.G. decided to refer the case to the State Ethics Commission with the understanding that his office could get back into it, depending on the finding.”

  “Well, with Tom being a judge, I’m sure he’d have more credibility than Blackburn. I mean it’s just a ‘he said/he said’ case, right?”

  “No, it’s not. There’s Tom on one side, but Blackburn has a number of witnesses lined up to lie to the Commission and say what he wants them to say. I’m sure we’ll hear testimony that he was trying to borrow money from them at the time with a story that the judge was ready to take a bribe. The Commission has made their names available to me—they’re all bottom of the barrel types—and I’ve been able to find out a lot about them from a good source, so it should be interesting.”

  “Poor Tom,” she said. “And with two kids in college I suppose it will cost him more than he can afford to defend himself.”

  “No, I’m doing it pro bono. I spoke to the Executive Committee about it and got their approval. Our firm doesn’t do any criminal work so there’s no chance of any conflict in the future with one of our lawyers representing someone in Tom’s courtroom.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’ll be rooting for both of you.”

  They each turned to a different section of the Sunday Providence Herald, he to the sports page and she to the local news.

  Minutes later G
race asked, “Why would this be in the paper, Doug?”

  He stopped reading and looked at her. “What is it?”

  Grace leaned over the paper which lay on the table. “It says that the police entered the Pawtucket Avenue dining establishment run by the Tarantino family on suspicion that there was illegal gambling taking place, but found nothing of the sort, only a room full of people having dinner.” She paused and looked up at Doug. “I assume they mean it was a police raid, even though that word isn’t used in the story. But if the police were wrong, and the Tarantinos weren’t charged with anything, why is there even a mention of it in the paper? That’s like telling us that a man in the street walked past a Rottweiler and the dog didn’t bite him.”

  “Very good, honey, I like that analogy. It sounds like the cops were embarrassed but still wanted to give the Tarantinos some bad publicity. If there’s gambling going on, they want the public to worry about being caught in a raid, so they’ll stay away. Gerry Quinn, the Chief of Police, was probably able to talk the right editor at the Herald into throwing that little piece of news into the paper. Don’t forget that the Herald has always been against gambling in its editorials.”

  Doug took satisfaction in knowing that he played a significant role in the failure encountered by the police the night before. As was the case numerous times over a period of twenty years, he had taken a coded message received from Joe Gaudette, a captain in the Providence Police, and passed it on immediately to someone in the Tarantino office on Atwells Avenue. Gaudette, a trusted friend of Sal Tarantino, the Mafia head in Rhode Island, couldn’t make any suspicious phone call from police headquarters on the same day that Gerry Quinn ordered his officers to raid a Tarantino club where casino gambling was known to take place. But then circumstances gave the Family an opening that allowed Gaudette to use Fiore as a middleman for messages, whose meaning he never knew, to be relayed to the Tarantinos. He realized now that the message he received and passed on Saturday was a warning to the Tarantinos that there would be a raid at the Pawtucket Avenue location Saturday night. It was a dangerous role he agreed to play years earlier when he was just a young associate looking to get ahead, but there was no denying it paid off for him … big time. He knew that being Managing Partner of his firm was only part of the reward.

  On the way to her brother’s home in Little Compton, Grace asked, “What arrangement did you make with Tom Raymond?”

  “He’s coming to the office at six o’clock on Tuesday. That photographer from Columbia is supposed to show up between five and six tomorrow and then I’ve got the Executive Committee staying late for a meeting. I expect to be home by ten at the latest.” Fiore knew that he would steer the meeting to an end by seven-thirty and then hurry over to the Howard Johnson Motel in Seekonk where Carol, his mistress, would already be in bed, waiting for him.

  “Is that about Tom?”

  It took Doug a few seconds to get back on track. “No, it’s a whole different issue,” he said. “Some of the partners have been lobbying for us to lay off a bunch of associates at the end of the year. Everyone can see from the monthly spreadsheets that billable hours have been way down consistently. They know that could mean no Christmas bonuses and maybe even cuts in salary for next year, and that’s making them unhappy.”

  “But the whole country’s in a recession. They wouldn’t be the only unhappy ones.”

  “That’s right, but they figure that if we let about ten or twelve associates go, the money we save can be spread around for the partners.”

  “That doesn’t sound very collegial to me.”

  “You’re right. It stinks. It’s the sort of thing that gives lawyers a bad name and makes us the butt of so many jokes. I’ll do whatever I can to convince the Committee to vote it down if it gets proposed at the partners meeting.”

  “Do you have a sense right now of how the Committee would vote? Does it have to be unanimous?”

  “No, I need three of the five, including myself. Right now my best guess is that Ed Jackson’s vote is the crucial one.”

  “But even if the Committee supports you, that’s no guarantee the partners would go along with it. Money is the root of you know what.”

  “I know, and I’d have to convince them it’s wrong to hurt the associates just to make the partners a little richer. Some of those young guys have families and mortgages. Besides, we’ve trained them to be good lawyers and we’ll need them when business picks up.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Grace said, “you had a call this morning while you were out running. I totally forgot about it.”

  “Who was it?”

  He didn’t leave his name and seemed to be in a hurry to get off the phone right away when I told him you weren’t home. He said to tell you that your friend wants to speak to you. I asked him if you’d know which friend he meant, and he just said ‘Yes’ and hung up.”

  Fiore knew that the caller was Joe Gaudette and he was telling Doug that Sandy Tarantino, Sal’s son and Doug’s college roommate for four years, wanted a meeting with him. Nine months had passed since the last time the two of them were together, and he understood that Sandy had something important to discuss if a meeting was necessary. He wondered at first whether it had anything to do with the police presence at the Pawtucket Avenue establishment the night before, but dismissed that thought since he had relayed Gaudette’s coded message and it was acted upon. Still, he knew that Sandy would not want to be kept waiting once he told Gaudette to set things up. Fiore had to find out how soon the meeting would take place.

  “That was from my biggest client,” he said. “Sunday’s just another work day for him. He probably told someone in his office to get me on the phone. He may even be in a hurry to see me tomorrow. I’ll stop at the mall and call back.” As he drove, Fiore thought about the matters he was handling for the Tarantinos and questioned whether he had done anything to upset them. That was always his first thought whenever Sandy summoned him to a meeting. He had a lot of homework to do before seeing his old friend.

  2

  THE STOCKY MAN LOOKING out the window wore a black pinstripe Armani suit over a fine white Egyptian cotton shirt and red paisley necktie selected from a catalog mailed monthly by an exclusive designer men’s shop in Milan. He took in the view around him a few seconds longer before answering the question put to him by the junior United States Senator from Rhode Island.

  “You can do whatever you like, Senator,” he said, turning away from the window. “Go back to your jewelry factory if you want. And if that’s not good enough anymore, set yourself up as a consultant or a lobbyist.” Sandy Tarantino’s voice was gruff, as if fighting its way through some bronchial congestion. “Do something with the influence you’ve got. Use the fucking connections you’ve made here in the last five years. Or maybe you want to take some time off. My family will carry you for a while. Like I said before, we’re trying to make this easy for you.”

  The Senator was peeved, and it showed when he spoke. “Your father never said I’d have to quit after one term. If Sal told me that, I might not even have bothered to run.”

  Tarantino walked over to one of the chairs in front of Spence Hardiman’s desk and sat down. He stared hard at the white-haired man, twenty years his senior, before speaking. “That’s bullshit, Senator. You’d have jumped at the chance to come here if the goddam term had been for just a year. And my father never gave you any guarantees when he financed your campaign.”

  Hardiman was having a difficult time keeping himself under control. The phone call he received from the elder Tarantino a few days earlier was friendly. Sal just said that his son would be in Washington to see him. Hardiman assumed the Family needed his help on some matter and that he’d solve the problem by speaking to the right person. But instead, the cocky young man with the menacing half smile had wasted no time in telling him that the Tarantinos didn’t want him to run for a second term.

  “We want John Sacco out of the Statehouse after next year,” Sandy said. �
�There’s one hell of an issue on casino gambling coming up and our thinking is he’d probably be against us on it. The Family never put anything more than chump change in Sacco’s campaign so there’s nothing he owes us. We’ve got to have our own man in the governor’s chair, someone we can count on to veto any bill that would hurt us. So Sacco’s got to find a place he’d rather be than Providence. That’s right here, Senator, where you’re sitting. My father’s sorry you have to move out, but that’s the way it is.”

  Hardiman tried to find out more about the gambling matter. He wanted Sandy to feel he still had plenty of influence in what went on in Rhode Island. “Believe me,” he said, pointing his thumb at his chest, “there’s guys in both the House and Senate back there I can still control. They’ll do what I tell ’em.”

  “Forget it, Senator. The decision’s already been made. Sal’s not taking any chances. He’s got to know the governor’s in our pocket when we need him.”

  Hardiman began to feel nauseous. He wanted Tarantino out of his office. He was being pushed hard to agree to something he wanted no part of. It would be better to get his old friend Sal on the telephone and talk about it. Maybe he could get the Tarantinos the help they needed, even if they didn’t think so. But goddammit, being a United States Senator meant everything to him and he couldn’t let this kid just walk in and change his life on the spot.

  The Senator got up from behind his massive oak desk and walked over to where Tarantino was sitting. He anticipated that his movement would prompt Sandy into getting up also and that he’d be able to walk him to the door. When Tarantino ignored his approach, Hardiman wasn’t sure what to do. He took a couple of steps backwards, pushed aside some papers on the corner of the desk and sat down, somewhat tentatively. Unaware of his body language, he folded his arms together in front of him while he considered his next move.

  “I’m glad I finally got to meet you today, Sandy,” Hardiman began, shaking his head up and down slightly for emphasis. “Sal has spoken to me about you any number of times. He’s proud of you and knows the Family will be in good hands when it’s time for you to take his place.”