Any Day Now: Chapter One

 

MAY 1985

NICK RICCI PLOWED through the revolving door of First New England Bank, leaving it spinning in his wake. He yanked off his tie and rolled it into a loose ball before slipping it into the pocket of his sport coat. What a stiff Tindal had turned out to be! When First New England merged with a larger bank from New York, Nick had been sorry to hear old Gallagher got the boot, but he didn’t know how sorry until today. The curt letter from Gallagher’s replacement should have warned him. Spencer Weston Tindal III had the type of Brahmin name that was a dead giveaway. Anyone with three last names was trouble.

Tucking his briefcase under an arm, Nick headed toward Government Center, threading his way through the narrow sidewalks of Boston’s financial district. Nick had read the insult in Tindal’s eyes and wondered which slur the man would use—dago, wop, or guinea?

Wop, probably. That seemed to be everyone’s favorite. Name-calling didn’t usually bother him anymore. He’d been hearing it since he was a kid. Growing up, he’d always been different, the only kid in Glens Falls who spoke two languages, the only kid born a foreigner. Nick’s old man had taught him how to turn the other cheek, told him to remember the Coliseum in Rome, shown him pictures of the glories of Florence. Think of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, his father always said. Nick didn’t need those thoughts anymore. Maybe he was right off the boat, but his parents had a nice retirement home in Florida, his brother taught astrophysics at Stanford, and First New England Bank of Boston gave him a $100,000 line of credit. Even if he was just a wop to the new assistant vice president.

Nick swung around a corner into School Street, avoiding the tourist crush at Quincy Market. Not that it wasn’t his own fault. He could have used a branch bank rather than the downtown office. But he’d wanted to feel like a big shot. Instead, today’s interview felt more like boot camp, like the moment the doctor ordered to him to “bend over and spread ’em.” Tindal’s methods weren’t as crude as a Marine Corps doctor’s. The banker preferred to intimidate with words and innuendo. When Nick mentioned he’d soon be looking for a bigger line of credit to expand his construction business, Tindal’s eyes had widened as he asked about any silent partners Nick might not have mentioned. Silent partners! What the banker wanted to know was if Nick fronted for the mob or was in hock to a loan shark. As if no Mayflower descendant with an M.B.A. from a swank school ever did business with wise guys. As if the feds hadn’t just slapped a huge fine on a conservative Boston bank that routinely laundered cash for local mobsters.

When a light stopped him at Tremont Street, Nick checked his watch and then headed to the Parker House to find a phone. He’d taken Tindal’s slur calmly enough, explaining he was just a small businessman, emphasis on “small.” He even offered to provide ten years of income tax records to show how he’d built the business himself, with every nickel accounted for. At that Tindal bristled and came about as close to an apology as Nick could expect. Perhaps for the annual review in two months, Tindal had said, but nothing to worry about today.

In the hotel lobby, he took the stairs down to the lounge and dug in his pocket for change. Gladys at his answering service picked up on the first ring. No, she hadn’t been able to make an appointment with the lady lawyer, but the secretary expected Miss Buchanan sometime after four-thirty.

“You want I should call now?”

Nick glanced at his watch again. “Don’t bother. I’ll walk up there and try to catch her.”

He used the answering service to make appointments and handle correspondence. It saved him the trouble of opening an office and taking on a real payroll. But Gladys was as jealous of his time and business as a regular secretary. “She the pretty one I seen on TV?” Gladys snapped her gum into the receiver and Nick’s ear.

“Probably. Any calls today?”

“Nope. Say, Mr. Ricci, you in some kind of trouble or  somethin’?”

“Nothing like that, Gladys. She’s just an old friend. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Had he really called Katie Buchanan an old friend? Although she was that, at one time she’d been so much more. But that was all over long ago. No matter how intense it had seemed at the time, his past with Katie was just kid stuff. And, anyway, what he needed her for today had nothing to do with their past.

He snapped open his briefcase and dug under the bank forms for the envelope with the photo. Some clarity had been lost by making a reproduction off a slide and even more by blowing the photo up. Nick lifted the picture into the light and checked one last time. The same overwhelming shock of recognition zapped through him. It wasn’t just the crowded Asian street filled with pushcarts and bicycles. It wasn’t just the coolie hats on the farm women or the black pajamas, either. It wasn’t even Vietnam or the Vietnamese. On that level the photo was too familiar, too well traveled in dreams and nightmares.

Holding the glossy at arm’s length, he studied the other face, the American face. Leon’s face. Of course Leon stood out in a Vietnamese street. A black man would stand out on any street in Asia. Not just because of his color, but because of his size as well. To the Vietnamese, all the Americans seemed huge, huge and powerful. Although he’d spent nearly a year in country in 1969, it was only now, sixteen years later, when he saw a photograph of one American amid hundreds of Vietnamese, that Nick understood that. While he was there, the Vietnamese people provided the background, along with the rice paddies and the water buffalo and the hooches. Back then, the only ones who counted were other Americans and Charlie. And the only time you got close enough to Charlie to see how little he was, either you bought it or Charlie did, so size didn’t matter much.

Today size was everything. Not only because Leon’s size and color had drawn Nick’s eyes to his old friend’s face. It mattered because the Vietnamese had their country back—-and they also had Leon T. Jackson, Nick’s buddy, his gunner, the friend whose grave he sometimes visited in Brockton.

How it happened, or why it happened, and who lay buried in the Jackson family plot didn’t count much to Nick. Katie Buchanan could figure all of that out. What counted was that somehow Leon was still in Vietnam, alive. Leon alive counted. After suffering sixteen years of guilt over Leon’s capture and death, today Nick had another chance—a second chance to do right by Leon.

He slid the photo back into his briefcase and snapped the locks. This time he wouldn’t fail.

KATE BUCHANAN SHRUGGED out of her jacket as she pushed through the door to her office. Francine looked up from the Epson word processor and plucked the pencil from her lips. “Who’s the new pro bono client?”

“A rapist who slashes the faces of his victims.” Kate dropped a manila folder on Francine’s desk. “They arraigned him on two counts with more to follow. I’ll take the case through probable cause, but that’s it. Someone else can try to come up with a defense.”

Kate hung up her jacket. When she swung around, Francine handed her three files. “You’ve got a light day tomorrow, at least.”

She glanced at the names and looked up. “Juvenile cases. What are these?”

Francine screwed up her face. “Let’s see. Tavares is malicious mischief, Renkin is DWI, and O’Gilley is shoplifting. And the judge . . . ” The secretary picked up the papers from her desk and glanced at the schedule taped to the Formica top. “You’ve got the Honorable Richard H. Shriver on the bench.”

Kate sighed. “Terrific. If he calls me ‘honey’ again I may slug him. Last time I came up before Shriver I actually bit my tongue to keep from calling him a jerk.” She tucked the files under her arm and opened the door to her office. “Any calls?”

“One. Some guy wanted to see you this afternoon, but I told him he’d have to catch you between four-thirty and five.” Francine shuffled through the papers on the desk. “The note’s around here somewhere.” She came up with a slip. “Oops. Mr. Bradford called and wanted you for dinner, but I scheduled coffee at the Ritz tomorrow morning instead. Eight o’clock.”

Nodding, Kate crossed to her own desk and dumped the files. She kicked off her shoes and started unpinning her hair as she returned to the outer office. “Why don’t you knock off early? It’s nearly five.”

She ducked into an alcove and filled a glass with ice from the small refrigerator. Francine was changing the computer disk when she came out. “I’ve got to stick around to finish typing a paper for Mark. It’s due tomorrow, and I’ve been putting it off all week.”

“What’s the professor’s topic this week?”

Francine grinned. “‘The Apollonian and Dionysian Imagery of Mann’s Death in Venice.’”

“Sounds deep.”

“Let’s hope his colloquium leader thinks so, too. I think Mark should settle for the master’s and forget the doctorate. He used to really love to read, but all this dissecting of stories has ruined literature for him. The magic’s gone.”

Kate transferred the bobby pins to the hand with the glass and fluffed her hair with her fingers. “I’m not sure the magic stays in anything. No matter what you’re doing, once it becomes a job it just turns into work.”

She headed back to her own office, closed the door, and poured a half-empty can of flat Coke into her glass. She glanced at the juvenile files but didn’t open them. Instead, she carried her drink to the window. An unseasonably warm breeze carried the taste of car exhaust from Storrow Drive. The hum of rush-hour traffic drowned the cries of the gulls wheeling over the Charles.

Hiking a hip onto the sill, she watched the birds. Her own work had lost its magic, too. Trial law was more than just a job, but lately something was missing. It was hard to recall the exhilaration of her first years in practice, the excitement of the first day in court, and the thrill of her first win in a trial. Although Kate tried to convince herself that everything dulled once the novelty wore off, she couldn’t quite believe it. It wasn’t that simple, like losing the newness from a great pair of shoes. At least after you broke in a new pair of pumps, your feet were comfortable. But if she’d broken in her practice the same way, why was she so uncomfortable?

She sipped the Coke and watched the procession of office workers heading down the sidewalks toward parked cars or subway stops or their favorite bartender. Her new client, Billy Schliemen, was just the latest in a string of sleazy punks whose violence and immorality turned her stomach. A few years ago she wouldn’t have minded so much. One glance through the thick folder recounting his abusive parents and roller-coaster ride through a half-dozen foster homes would have earned her sympathy. How could anyone expect a kid who’d endured that kind of childhood to grow up to be a model citizen? But plenty did. She’d learned that much. And plenty of kids endured worse than Billy Schliemen without turning to rape. She’d learned that, too.

She left the cup on the sill and gathered up tomorrow’s case files before settling on the couch under the window. Maybe Winn was right. Maybe she should join his firm. She’d done ten years of solid work as a criminal attorney defending the sleazes along with the innocent Maybe ten years was enough. Joining Winn’s firm wouldn’t mean selling out, even though most of his clients were corporations.

She took another sip of Coke and savored the cold liquid. “Bradford and Buchanan, Attorneys-at-Law.” She’d have to take second billing, of course. Winn would insist on that.

Rattling the ice in her glass, she watched the dark swirl for a moment. But this wasn’t only about a law practice. There would be a second label: “Mrs. Winston Bradford.” That sounded a bit pompous, but after all, Winn was a bit pompous. “Kate Buchanan Bradford.” Not much better. Thank God Francine had managed to put him off until tomorrow morning. She really was fond of Winn, but was that enough? If he started pushing for answers to both of his questions, she could use the juvenile cases as an excuse. Work excused everything for Winn, even his personal life. Maybe it’d be nice to work in an office with deep pile carpets and the hush of money and respectability. Lord knew she was sick to death of the drab institutional colors of most of Boston’s courtrooms. But simply changing jobs might not be the answer. And the kind of marriage Winn wanted didn’t include children, at least not immediately. First a year or two to get accustomed to marriage, he had said, and then maybe start a family. Maybe. Kate didn’t completely trust her own sudden urge for a child but figured she’d waited too long for Winn to say “maybe.”

Francine’s quick knock broke her daydream, and Kate straightened up as her secretary walked in. An odd smile teased the corners of Francine’s mouth as she hurried across the room, holding out a business card. “The fellow who called earlier showed up. He says he’s an old friend from high school. I wish I’d gone to school with guys like him.”

Kate frowned as she took the card. She read the name before it really registered: “Dominic V. Ricci, Ricci Construction.” Her heart tripped into a faster beat. Nick Ricci? She felt a blush begin and stood up quickly. The forgotten files in her lap slipped to the floor.

“Oh, shit. Give me a second to clean this up, will you?” She knelt down and bumped her stockinged toe against the leg of the couch. “Do you see my shoes anywhere?”

Kate started reassembling the spilled files but looked up at Francine’s giggle. “Oh, great, you’re loving this. Thanks a lot. Where are my shoes?”

Francine shrugged and opened the door to the outer office despite Kate’s glare. “You can come in now, Mr. Ricci.”

Kate shoved the files under the couch and dashed for her desk. Flopping into her chair, she had time to comb her fingers through her hair just once before Nick Ricci walked back into her life.

Copyright 1989 © by Elizabeth Quinn Barnard of text and 2011 by Straight Up Press of design and photos.  All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.