My Honorable Brother Read online

  On the way home from the party Doug apologized to Grace again, said he would go into the office the next morning a couple of hours earlier than he originally planned and would quit work in time to accompany her and Susan to the ballet.

  Grace thanked him, and asked, “Do you have any idea now why we were invited tonight?”

  “Not a clue,” he answered, “not a clue in the world.”

  17

  ROSA SANTOS WAS USUALLY among the first people to arrive at the Walters, Cassidy & Breen office each day. Her official hours were from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but invariably she stepped off the elevator each morning about twenty minutes early. Soon she was busy preparing the first of many thermoses of coffee that were consumed each day by the lawyers, paralegals and clerical staff of the firm. During the day she also checked to see that the kitchens and snack areas on each of the three floors were clean and that there were enough cans of soda and cartons of milk in the refrigerators.

  Each morning Santos taped a sheet of paper to one of the cabinets in the kitchen on the thirty-first floor. As the day progressed, she learned from Mary Talbot, the receptionist, which conference rooms were reserved by lawyers for the following day and how many people would attend each meeting. She noted the locations and numbers on the sheet so she’d be certain to have sufficient coffee and muffins waiting for the conferees when they arrived.

  Santos saw that there would be four people meeting in the private conference room adjacent to Doug Fiore’s office at 8:15, and decided to check on the condition of the room. As she headed in that direction, she heard an unusual sound coming from behind the closed door of Frank Scardino’s office. She stopped to listen. A few seconds later the noise was repeated several times. Standing there, she realized that what she was hearing were the intermittent sighs and moans of a woman having sex. It was coming from the right side of the room, where she knew Scardino’s sofa was located. Rosa smiled, but continued on toward Fiore’s office when she heard the muffled sound of Scardino’s voice.

  At five minutes after eight, Santos again walked from the kitchen to Fiore’s office. She was pushing a small cart on which was placed everything needed for the meeting. As she passed through the reception area and into the corridor where Fiore was located, Scardino emerged from his office, a short distance ahead of her, followed by Janice Rossman. They turned in the opposite direction, proceeded to the end of the corridor and turned left. At 9:30 Santos was able to take her first break. She removed her white apron and went over to the reception desk where Mary Talbot was busy fielding incoming telephone calls.

  Talbot had a well-deserved reputation for being both difficult to get along with and very demanding. Booking conference rooms was part of her jurisdiction, and she regulated it with an iron hand. Rosa saw her bully young associates on several occasions. She drove them out of a conference room where they were working if protocol wasn’t followed and the room reserved with her ahead of time. Talbot didn’t concern herself with the fact that the attorney needed a large table on which to spread out a raft of papers or that no one else was signed up to use the room at the time. Incredibly, her victims tolerated such conduct without questioning it.

  Santos figured that Talbot was probably about fifty-five years old, perhaps ten or twelve years her senior. She knew Talbot was employed by the firm for almost twenty years, all of it as a receptionist, and that she always had to be aware of everything going on within the confines of Walters, Cassidy & Breen. Santos learned early on that Talbot had no problem reprimanding her if she mixed up one of her assignments. But she felt that her job security was enhanced to the extent that she could pass on any interesting tidbits of information, especially those considered scandalous.

  Santos rested her left elbow on the high wooden counter that enclosed the reception desk in the form of a horseshoe. She looked around to be sure no one else was close enough to overhear the conversation. “Mr. Scardino had girlfriend with him this morning,” she said.

  “Where?” Mary asked.

  “In his office. I went by not yet eight o’clock. I think …”

  A call came in and Talbot put up a finger, indicating that Rosa shouldn’t say anything until she answered it. One call followed another for several minutes. As soon as the switchboard was silent, she asked, “Was the door open?”

  “No, no, the door closed.” Rosa shook her head from side to side.

  “Did you see her?”

  “Not that time. I just listen.”

  “You were eavesdropping?”

  Santos knew what the word meant. “No, no, they say nothing. I hear them making love when I go by.”

  Talbot stared at her, a smile forming at the corners of her mouth. The switchboard began to light up again, but she ignored it. “You heard them?”

  “Yes, I hear her, you know.” Rosa smiled and arched her eyebrows. “She make lot of noise … ow, ow, ow.”

  “Do you know who it was?” Talbot finally raised her finger again, before Santos could reply, and took care of business. When she looked up, Rosa told her of seeing Scardino and Janice Rossman come out of the room a short while later.

  “This place is really getting to be something,” Talbot said, shaking her head. The sarcasm was as heavy as she could make it. “Don’t tell anyone else.”

  “Oh no, no one else,” Rosa hurried to answer. “I tell only you.”

  Talbot opened the notebook she used to log in room reservations and moved her finger partway down the page. “That conference in Room 9 at two o’clock has been cancelled. There’s a box of Danish pastry in the refrigerator upstairs that they were going to have. Leave one with me—I’ll eat it on my break—and take the rest home.”

  Santos understood that the immediate reward, though small, was an indication of the value of the information she delivered.

  As soon as Rosa left the area and returned to work, Talbot dialed Helen Barone’s exchange. Barone’s employment at the firm began exactly one month after her own, and the two were always close friends. Helen was promoted to the office manager position five years earlier, and Scardino was now her immediate boss. “Come down when you have a chance, or meet me at break at 10:30,” Talbot said. “I’ve got some news that may give you something to think about.”

  18

  LIGHT SNOW WAS FALLING, slowing down the evening’s rush hour traffic even more than usual. George Ryder had the radio of his ’88 Ford station wagon tuned to a sports talk show, but wasn’t aware of much that was being said. He was pleased with the fact that for the second consecutive day he was able to bill out a full eight hours, and was thinking about all the potential work ahead of him in negotiating the new Ocean State Wire & Cable contract. Maybe things were beginning to turn around, he told himself.

  Ryder and Brad Hanley were together all afternoon. They met for lunch at a small Italian restaurant called Abruzzi’s, just a block away from the plant, where both ordered the super calzones baked by the owner. Afterwards, they went to discuss strategy for the negotiations with the Machinists Union. Hanley led Ryder to the conference room located a floor above Ocean State’s main office area. The space was used for storage before Hanley came to the Company, but he had it remodeled when the plant showed its first profit under his stewardship. It was a place where he could be certain no one overheard his conversation. In his office the previous day, Ryder reviewed his notes from the contract talks that took place three years earlier. In those negotiations the Machinists Union represented the production employees for the first time. He studied the papers carefully and made a list of everything he wanted to share and discuss with Hanley the next day.

  The settlement with the Union hurt the Company badly. From a financial point of view it was disastrous, especially since the decreasing demand for Ocean State’s wire in the recession made it virtually impossible for the Company to even achieve breakeven status.

  Hanley went to the Union after the first year of the agreement, looking for any sort of wage concession he could get. He w
as turned down flat. The negotiating committee listened attentively to every economic argument he made, but taking its cue from Johnny Morelli, the Machinist business agent, it refused to bring Hanley’s proposal to the membership for their consideration and a vote. Countless hours spent on the preparation of detailed graphs and other industry statistics to support his appeal for help were futile, a total waste of time.

  The contract settlement also accelerated Hanley’s own loss of face with the employees on the production floor. His rash behavior in trimming their wages and benefits too drastically as soon as they threw out the Steelworkers Union caused them to get back at him the only way they could—by voting for representation by another union. Then, when the negotiations reached the critical point, they went eyeball to eyeball with him on the final offers put on the table by each side. With the threat of a strike riding on his next move, Hanley was the one forced to blink. The workforce fittingly took that as a sign of the Company’s weakness and celebrated its own strength. In the ensuing three years, whenever they thought that management was violating either the explicit or implicit meaning of any of the forty-seven articles of the labor agreement, they didn’t hesitate to file grievance after grievance to retain what they had won.

  Ryder knew that he and Hanley had a lot of ground to cover that afternoon. His goal was to find out what Ocean State’s president hoped to achieve in the upcoming contract. To try and get a good handle on the Company’s economic situation, he looked at a series of profit and loss statements Hanley gave him and reviewed the amount of wire tonnage shipped to Ocean State’s twenty largest customers in the past year.

  Ryder understood that Hanley’s emotional involvement weakened his client’s position at the bargaining table. His proposals in search of relief came off sounding more like pleas for mercy than realistic presentations meriting the other side’s deliberation. Ryder realized that the burden of trying to soften up the Union negotiating committee at the opening session would be his, not Hanley’s. It was important to put together the best statistics available for making a strong initial presentation to the committee. He had to find the right data from Ocean State’s recent three-year history that everyone could comprehend and discuss in a rational manner. The most telling set of facts was needed to convince the employees that costs had to be held in check in order for Ocean State to be able to compete with other wire plants while it waited for the recession to end.

  By 5:30 that afternoon Ryder had organized a lot of the information given to him, but wasn’t ready to discuss any of the details with his client. He wanted to spend the next day in his office reviewing the material—a good start toward another full billing day—and drafting an opening statement to guide him when he addressed the Union at the first meeting. It was already scheduled to take place in two weeks. The statement would be supplemented with the best exhibits he could put together from all the economic information given him by Hanley. He’d have to look confident in his position when the time came to hand out copies of the Company’s proposals to John Morelli and all six of the employees on his committee. If nothing else, Ocean State had to be seen as being completely credible in its presentation. If not, whatever proposals it submitted during the negotiations wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Ryder intended to begin pressing Hanley about his position on taking an employee strike this time around, if necessary. He had no idea whether the Tarantinos would have any input in the discussions or whether the direction on any crucial decisions would be coming from the Platt brothers, still the Company’s majority owners. He remembered that neither he nor Hanley knew for certain who called the final shots three years earlier. Whenever Ryder thought about that fiasco, he suspected that Doug Fiore encouraged the Tarantinos to deliver a “no strike” ultimatum to Hanley for purely selfish reasons. He was certain Fiore didn’t want to risk losing a client over a strike, whether it was the right strategy for the Company or not. Speaking to Fiore might get him the answer he was looking for, but it might also lead to embarrassing questions about Ryder’s billable hours. Better stay away from him for now, he decided.

  The meeting with Hanley ended abruptly, however, before Ryder could raise the subject of a strike. Brad suddenly informed him that he had to attend to a few matters with the second shift and that he had a prior engagement that evening. They arranged to meet again the following Monday.

  “I’ve done one smart thing you’ll be happy about, George,” Brad told him. “We’re renting a small suite at the Biltmore on a monthly basis. It’s to make sure we have a nice place to meet with customers whenever they come to Providence. If any of our meetings with the Union run late, you’ll probably be able to sleep there instead of having to drive home. If you want, you can leave a change of clothes and a toilet kit in the room. I’ll get another key made and give it to you when I see you on Monday.”

  “Yes,” Ryder said out loud as he turned off Interstate 95 at the West Warwick exit, “there’s going to be a lot of work to do for Ocean State in the next couple of months.” His billable hours would look good on the computer printouts for a change, and the partners could stop thinking of him as a problem with whom the firm had to deal. He figured that would take the pressure off him for a while at least.

  Maybe there’d be other work coming in too, he thought. Bob Gorman told him that Fiore seemed receptive about speaking to Paul Castillo. That could mean some arbitration cases or other projects Castillo might give him to handle. Ryder had also discussed his free time with Lynn Benedetto, the marketing director. She was enthusiastic and promised to send out letters on his behalf to all the employer associations and chambers of commerce in the State. The firm would offer his services, at no cost, to speak at their meetings on any subject concerning labor relations.

  You never know where you’ll find your next client, he mused, turning off the radio in the Ford. Maybe I can start getting as lucky as that sonofabitch Fiore.

  19

  IT WAS THE FIRST day all week that any mail was delivered to the Pawtucket Store 24 mailbox rented in the name of Steve Pearson. Sandy Tarantino didn’t get to his office on Atwells Avenue until just after eleven that morning. He had already spent two hours speaking to several teachers at the private school in Riverside attended by his son. By the time he sat down at his desk, the two envelopes addressed to “Steve Pearson” were picked up by a messenger and were waiting for him. Neither one showed a return address.

  He opened the first and found a handwritten letter, on yellow legal-size paper, from Tommy Arena. Arena wanted Sandy and his father to know that some agents from the Justice Department would be coming to Providence soon to see whether they could discover anything that would connect him with the Tarantino family. They were playing this game with his Union all over the country, Arena wrote. “It’s because the fuckers never did like the Teamsters, ever since fucking Bobby Kennedy.”

  If they asked him any questions, Arena would say that he hadn’t spoken to Sal Tarantino once in all the years since Sal became a don, and that he bumped into Sandy occasionally at a restaurant on Federal Hill. If the agents wanted any history, Tommy would let them know that he and Sal worked for the same trucking company when they were younger. Later on, after Arena became a Union officer, Sal called him once in a while for a little help in getting a Teamsters job for one of his friends. Arena even found work for Sandy a couple of summers while he was attending Princeton. That’s how the two of them first met. He would deny that he ever set foot in the building where the Tarantinos had their offices. “Make fucking sure that anyone who works there says the same thing,” he wrote.

  Arena also said he felt he should stop making collections for a while, at least until he heard that the investigation was over. He figured that if government agents started following him, they would see the small army of drivers calling on him at the warehouse and restaurants he used as offices. That could mean trouble for everyone, he said, not just him. All he had to do was notify the three freight warehouses he did business with
and they’d get word to the drivers that all collections were being postponed. Arena wrote that when it was safe for him to start up again, he’d push his “clients” to pay everything that was due, retroactively.

  “But don’t count on getting all of it. Some of these fucking independents don’t know how to save shit,” he noted. “And some of them drive a truck four days a week only because they found out they can’t fucking survive on three.” But he would find a way to pick up the summaries from the three warehouses every week, and he’d keep a running tab on what everyone owed.

  Sandy knew that Arena was right about postponing his collections for a period of time. He was also well aware that his father didn’t trust the Teamster agent at all. If Tommy could use the investigation as a way of putting more than his share of the money received from the drivers and warehousemen into his own pocket, Sal Tarantino was sure he would.

  The second envelope had a Washington, DC, postmark. Sandy opened it and took out a small piece of plain white paper. Written on it, in pencil, was “S.H. March 15.” That was all. Sandy knew exactly what it meant. He picked up the phone and dialed two numbers.

  “Are you busy, Pop? I’ve got a couple of things to talk to you about.”

  Sal Tarantino was sitting behind a huge oak desk. The many deep nicks that showed on top evidenced the fact that it was solid throughout, not a veneer over plywood or something just as cheap. Its back and sides displayed intricate floral carvings. It was the same desk that Tony Buscatelli used in running the Family for almost thirty-five years. Word had it that it was surreptitiously removed from the Senate President’s office at the Statehouse in the middle of the night and delivered to the senior Buscatelli as payment on a gambling debt.

  “Come on in, Salvy,” his father said, as Sandy opened the door. He was the only one who called him by that name. For him, Sandy was too effeminate a name for a man. He also disliked “Junior” intensely, and gave his only son a different middle name than his own to avoid it. Still, since he was always “Sal” or “Salvy” himself to his friends, he understood the reason for the nickname.