The Accidental Pallbearer (2 page)

As the gold curtain rises at the Met, Robinson leans over and whispers, “Time to fall in love again.”

“Take a look at her, Robby – this Amazonian beauty! This is our Carmen!”

In the hush, one last pull each on the wineskin, then
Robinson leans in again and whispers, “You feel something. This is your problem. It’s always been your problem.”

At intermission, Robinson returns with an eleven-dollar tub of popcorn to the ill-lit area on the other side of the rest-rooms to find Conte gone. Ten minutes later, having consumed the tub and licked his fingers, he checks the men’s room. No Conte. As he returns to their seats, an usher approaches with a note:

Something on the floor. He picks up Conte’s BlackBerry and pockets it – with no intention of giving it back.

Three blocks from the Galaxy movie house in Troy, detectives Catherine Cruz (40, fit, good-looking) and Robert Rintrona (58, pudgy, red-faced) drink coffee and eat glazed doughnuts in their unmarked car, in a heavy downpour, when a big man without an umbrella, dressed in a gray pinstriped Armani suit and a tie, takes refuge, soaked to the skin, in a filthy telephone booth without a door, a few feet from where they sit. The big man attempts a phone call, then assaults the phone with his forearms, in impotent rage. Too late to save them: His kids are lost. An avalanche of coins pours down onto the floor of the booth and spills out onto the pavement. Cruz, junior partner and driver, starts to get out of the car when Rintrona says, “Forget it, Katie, this is not in my job description. Call a cruiser. They love this shit.” She replies, “I’m warning you, Bobby, don’t eat the rest of my doughnut,” as she leaves the car and flashes the badge beneath the lapel of her black leather jacket. The big man turns meekly around, she cuffs him and they take him, as they say in all the cop shows, downtown – to a windowless room of foetid air, where Cruz and Rintrona sit, she intrigued, he irate, as the big man, who
has identified himself as Eliot Conte, tries to explain why he, so expensively dressed, would be walking in a heavy rain without an umbrella, in a neighborhood of dubious character. Rintrona asks if he’s “another one of these drug dealers stationed in the Bronx who’s come up here to ply your filthy wares. No? The governor’s pimp? A homo looking to exploit a Negro child of the ghetto?”

Conte – weary, phlegmatic, not giving a damn if they throw him in a cell for the night or for thirty years – presses softly to his face a towel – how fragrant it is – lent to him by Catherine Cruz. From her locker. He says, “I was trying to call a cab. To take me to the Albany train station. Because I’d lost my BlackBerry. When the phone eats my last quarters, I lose control. I tend to lose control.”

Rintrona pounds the table, “That’s the fourth fuckin’ time you said that, Mister. You lost your BlackBerry? He lost his BlackBerry. Did you check your ass? This is twenty-first-century fuckin’ Troy, New York, where there are no functioning telephone booths, as if you didn’t know, buster.”

“Mr. Conte,” Cruz says, “you should be more forthcoming. You give us, sir, the impression that you’re withholding.”

“Don’t you just love my partner’s sweet fuckin’ civility? Perhaps you would enjoy a cup of coffee, Mr. Conte?”

“Sure.”

“You can’t have it.”

“I’ll pay the damages, Detective.”

“Why would anyone not from here, dressed like you, come to this shithole?”

“Wouldn’t you like to call your attorney, Mr. Conte?”

“I came for the opera. I don’t want a lawyer.”

“Code, Katie. Opera is code.”

“Mr. Conte,” Cruz says, with more than professional interest, “would you be referring to the live telecast of
Carmen
at the Galaxy?”

“Yes.”

“They do drug deals there, they did a shooting there, he tells me opera. What’s your occupation, Conte?”

“Private investigator.”

“You motherfuckers are all alike.”

“
Carmen
, Mr. Conte, unless I am mistaken, won’t let out for another three hours. You came all the way from Utica only to leave after the first act? Doesn’t add up.”

“The tenor was not in good voice.”

“You just say something against Pavarotti, you three-dollar bill?”

“It wasn’t Pavarotti, Bobby. It couldn’t have been Pavarotti.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Pavarotti is dead.”

“BULLSHIT!!”

“He’s dead, Bobby.”

“Whose side you on, Katie? I saw the son of a bitch on television last night. He shaved off his beard, okay? Lost a lot of poundage. Must have had plastic deception done to the face. The guy looked good, younger than ever, and don’t tell me, Conte, the voice was not in. The voice was in deep. So much so I felt like I was being … forget about it, what I felt, it’s private.”

The smallest trace of a smile appears and disappears on Conte’s face. Rough-edged Rintrona is definitely kin.

“I caught that show, Bobby. He didn’t have the beard and was a lot lighter, a real stud, who definitely looked a lot younger. Know why? That was a film from 1967.”

Long silence.

“Pavarotti is dead, Katie?”

“He’s dead, Bobby.”

“Shit.”

Long silence.

“The son of a bitch sang last night in a way that communicated a lot of beautiful pain to yours truly.”

“The agony of the guilty man, Detective Rintrona,” Conte says. “The sinner praying to God without hope.”

“Why the fuck does he pray if he doesn’t have hope, wise guy?”

“Bobby,” Cruz says, “it was the Verdi Requiem.”

“Who died?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore who, Detective. Only the lyric ravishment of the voice matters, the hot flood of sensuous sound lapping us all over, which I agree was deeply in, as you so perfectly put it.”

“Shall we drop this faggot talk?”

“Mr. Conte, is there anyone who could verify your presence at the Galaxy?”

“Yes. Antonio Robinson.”

“He drove you from Utica, Mr. Conte?”

“Two guys, Katie, who go together to the opera?”

“But, Bobby, that’s all you ever play in the car.”

“Don’t insinuate against my sexuality, Katie. We go over to the Galaxy, that fuckin’ garbage dump, how do we pick this fairy out?”

“The only black man, aside from the usher. He’s Utica’s chief of police. Six foot three, 230 pounds.”

“The opera. The chief of police. My ass. Next you’ll tell me your father is Silvio Conte, the biggest bastard of upstate New York, bar none.”

“He’s my father and also the other thing you said.”

“Six-three, 230? Huh? This so-called Robinson is you except for the color factor … make a call to Utica, sweetie, and verify the father is the father.”

When Cruz returns, she takes Rintrona aside, who blanches. Rintrona turns to Conte, “I am a flawed person, God knows very well how flawed. We’ll take you to Albany, all is forgiven both sides.”

Rintrona sits in the back with Conte to discuss Pavarotti’s guilt, which Rintrona believes to be personal and not an expression of Verdi’s sacred music – “because the man who sings this agony of guilt, Eliot – if I may call you Eliot – he lives the pain, he’ll always live the fuckin’ pain.”

Conte says, “Yes, Detective.” Then tells Rintrona that Pavarotti left his wife, who was his high school sweetheart, and two daughters in the middle ’90s for another woman.

“He left his babies?”

“At the time he was singing the Requiem you saw the other night, they were babies. But when he left his wife the kids were in their thirties.”

Rintrona,
con grande passione
: “Man to man, Eliot: He loves his high school sweetheart, and so forth, adores the kids, so forth, but for unknown reasons in 1967 the seed of restlessness stirs in the groinal area, which is also the guilt area. Once those babies achieve their thirties they’re not all
that lovable, take it from me. And neither is the high school sweetheart. Forget the high school sweetheart! Then the seed has no choice but to burst out!”

“But your kids make such a fuss over you, Bobby.”

“The point, Katie, as if you didn’t know, I make no fuss over
them
. I desisted years ago. Katie wouldn’t look twice at us, Eliot. What a shame. You married by any chance?”

“Was.”

“Intelligent man here, Katie.”

“Kids?”

“Formerly.”

“FORMERLY!” Laughter out of control giving way to a coughing, phlegm-disgorging fit. “This is a man, partner, who can handle the give and take of life. FORMERLY!” Laughing, coughing, hawking up into a handkerchief. “Here we are and here’s my card. Anything I can do, hey! you never know, don’t hesitate. I’d be honored to lend assistance within so-called legal limits.”

Cruz says, “Who, by the way, was the tenor today who wasn’t in good voice?”

“Roberto Alagna.”

“Kind of dreamy, though not in Luciano’s vocal class.”

Conte thinks she’s kind of dreamy.

“Eliot,” Rintrona asks, softly, plaintively, “Confirm something for me, will ya?”

“I’ll try.”

“Is my partner busting my balls as usual, or is the King of the High Cs dead?”

“Pavarotti is dead.”

“Since fuckin’ when?”

“September the 6
^th
, 2004.”

“WHAT?!”

“Yes.”

“Where the fuck have I been?”

Eliot and Cruz exchange a look and bite their tongues.

“I don’t like it, Eliot.”

“Detective, neither do I.”

He boards the train in Albany at twilight, in a downpour that will not cease for three days. The milk train, they’d referred to it in his youth, which covers the ninety miles to Utica in three hours and twelve minutes. He contemplates his image in the window’s filthy glass – the rain-matted hair, the rain-styled bangs. Frankenstein’s Monster. Darkness and heavy bags under the eyes. Conte has been an insomniac since his undergraduate days.

Across the aisle from him, a Caucasian male, his wife, his child – fifteen months old. Younger than Conte’s when he left them. In the row in front of the little family, a black man, ancient and feigning deep sleep, daydreaming of striking out Willie Mays with the bases loaded. The ancient black man won’t stir for three hours and twelve minutes. Several rows beyond, a Muslim woman, veiled, motionless. She’ll remain motionless throughout what will ensue. At the other end of the car, a smiling teenage girl, eyes closed, in a Yankees cap, swaying in her seat and aurally shielded from what will ensue by a headset blasting misogynistic rap into her brain. Across from the teenager, a Mexican immigrant who, in about an hour, will beg the Virgin to protect the innocent, that they
may come unto her. There are no other witnesses. There are no witnesses. “This car Utica only, folks. Utica only.”

The baby begins to cry, full-throated, with piercing tone, as the train pulls out of Albany. The man (the husband, the father) slaps the baby across the face. His wife offers the baby her spectacular breast, but the baby will not suck – it prefers to cry – and when the woman is slow to cover herself the man slaps her, hard on the ear. The baby cries. The daddy slaps twice. Pinches and twists as he pinches the baby’s chubby thigh. The baby cries.

Conte, in flight, recalls a televised interview with Pavarotti in which the tenor says that proper breathing technique can be learned by any singer who can execute, while singing, what he does daily, pushing down in a bowel movement. In a lightning-quick non sequitor, the sexy, thirty-something interviewer asks Pavarotti what he does mid-aria if he needs to clear his throat. I do nothing. Nothing? I do nothing because I do not sing from the throat. Like a baby produces the voice, I sing. Are you understanding? Even when the baby cries for ten hours without stopping, no soreness of the throat.
Perché
? Because the baby produces the voice from here, darling, supported from here, below, where the true voice is born. He puts his hand on the interviewer’s diaphragm in illustration. It slips lower. (She suppresses the urge, she’ll wait until after the interview, to ask him if her true voice is born in her vagina.) When we grow we lose nature. We talk and sing dangerous, from the throat. Pavarotti places his huge hand on her warm throat, his pinky drifting down and finding her breast. I have career like atomic bomb.
Perché
? Because Luciano big baby. Luciano is nature.
Capisci, mia figa stretta
?!

The daddy slaps the baby very hard, three times, on the face. Conte, unable to escape, glances over at the man, who catches his glance and responds with a glare and the middle finger. Conte is afraid. Conte is a timid man. He gives the man the thumbs-up sign and says, “I don’t blame you, not in the least.”

The rumble of the train in motion and the crying and slapping fill the car like white noise and Conte is seized by the moment that had earned him his expulsion from UCLA, when he’d felt taken over, when he’d become a vessel for rage, when he’d dangled the provost, all five feet four of him, by the ankles out of the provost’s fifth-floor office window. “By the heels, like Mussolini in Milan,” he’d whispered over and over again. (“That wasn’t me, Robby.” “Who was it, pal?”)