“Call me Cadillac. Everybody does.”

  “Quaint name. Well, Mr. Cadillac, I am afraid you have really stepped in it. Illegal occupation of a commercial dwelling is a felony in this state.”

  “No kiddin?” The voice sounded surprised, like an intelligent ape discovering that a banana was peelable. “I got arrested for a felony once. They charged me with riot. I was only playin’ Johnny on the Pony with a couple of guys who owed somebody a few bucks. On account of all the broken bones, the cops called it riot. Isn’t that a riot?”

  “I am not amused.”

  “Don’t be. I wasn’t makin’ no jokes. So what’s on your mind?”

  “Since we seem so free with my building, I believe you owe me, in the very least, rent money.”

  “Rent! For this crummy place? I got news for you, bud. This place had no lights, no phones, and no water. I hadda hook em up myself. And believe me, it cost plenty. I figure you owe me for getting your joint together so good.”

  “Why don’t we have my lawyers discuss the particulars with your lawyers, my good man?” suggested Walter Weld Hill.

  “Lawyers? I ain’t got no lawyers.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” said Walter Weld Hill with a dry-as-toast sigh.

  “I guess we can’t do business, can we? I mean, who are your lawyers gonna talk to if I ain’t got lawyers of my own? My mailman?”

  “Why don’t I simply visit the premises with my lawyers?”

  “How many you got?”

  “I believe the firm of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone is staffed by nearly a dozen trial attorneys and other functionaries.”

  “Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone!” exploded the gruff voice. “They sound like fuggin’ jewelers. You sure they’re lawyers?”

  “They happen to be the most eminent in the state,” Hill said sourly, thinking: This man is a positive vulgarian.

  “Okay, tell you what. I can see you’re serious about this. Get your lawyers. Bring ’em over. All of them. Every last one. I’ll get my people together and we’ll do a sit-down. How’s that sound?”

  “Tiresome,” said Walter Weld Hill, who had never before encountered a business person who did not turn to jelly at the names of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone, Attorneys-at-Law. It appeared he would have to go through with it. In person.

  “I shall be over within the hour,” he promised.

  “Great. I can hardly wait. Just ask for Cadillac. I’m the CM.”

  “I believe that is GM.”

  “Not here, it ain’t.”

  As Walter Weld Hill hung up, he pinched the bridge of his nose once more. This was such a comedown for the man who introduced the Palladian Arch to Boston.

  · · ·

  Walter Weld Hill’s white Lincoln arrived a fashionable seven minutes after the assorted vehicles of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone had pulled into the parking area of the Manet Building, situated in the crook of a tentacular tributary of the Neponset River.

  Sol Greenglass, senior partner, bustled up, his hand-tooled leather briefcase passing from hand to hand excitedly.

  “We’re ready, Mr. Hill,” said Sol Greenglass, who, because he was not a Brahmin, was not allowed to invoke Walter Weld Hill’s Christian name.

  “Very well,” said Walter Weld Hill, shading his eyes as he looked up at the gleaming silvery-blue mirrored-glass face of the Manet Building. He frowned. “Does this remind you of sunglasses?”

  Sol Greenglass looked up. “A little. So what?”

  Walter Weld Hill frowned like an undertaker. “Nothing. We had best get about this.”

  The other lawyers formed a train behind Walter Weld Hill as he strode toward the aluminum-framed foyer entrance.

  Two paces behind, Sol Greenglass was almost literally rubbing his hands together with anticipation.

  “When they see us sail in like this, en masse, they’re going to positively plotz,” he chortled. “I love it when they plotz.”

  “Yes,” said Walter Weld Hill vaguely. He had no idea what “plotz” meant. It was one of those vulgar Jewish words. He took pains to remain unacquainted with them, just as he scrupulously excluded the forces of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone from his social circle.

  They passed into a rather garish lobby. At a curved desk a male security guard had his face buried in a racing paper. He pointedly ignored them.

  The directory looked like the menu in a seedy diner, white plastic letters mounted on a tacky aquamarine board. Some of the letters were actually askew.

  Walter Weld Hill read down the department listings.

  There were no names. But between “Consiglieri” and “Debt Collection”–odd listings, those–was an odder listing: “Boss.”

  “How droll,” said Walter Weld Hill, noting that the “Boss” held sway on the fifth floor.

  They crowded into the spacious elevator together. It was filled with Muzak of a kind Walter Weld Hill, for all his varied social experience, had never encountered.

  “My word. It sounds like opera.”

  “I think it’s The Barber of Seville,” said Sid Korngold.

  “Eh?”

  “Rossini,” supplied Abe Bluestone.

  “At least their taste is not entirely bankrupt,” muttered Walter Weld Hill, wincing at his own use of a particularly painful word.

  The elevator stopped, dinged, and let them off on the fifth floor.

  Briefcases swinging, jaws jutting forward, the law office of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone marched in lockstep behind their client as they negotiated the stainless-steel maze of corridors.

  “What is that odd odor?” asked Hill, his long nose wrinkling and sniffing.

  The collective noses of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone began sniffing the air too. Finally a junior lawyer ventured an opinion.

  “Pot,” he said.

  “What is that in English?” Hill asked Sol Greenglass.

  “Marijuana.”

  “My Lord! Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Last I heard.”

  They discovered that the odor was coming from behind a section marked “PHARMACEUTICALS.”

  “How odd,” murmured Walter Weld Hill. “One would think that physicians would not indulge in such distasteful medications. Remind me to report LCN to the AMA.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hill.”

  They passed to the end of a long white corridor from which emanated an even more disagreeable odor.

  “What is that pungent smell?” asked Hill.

  “Garlic.”

  “Ugh,” said Hill, holding his nostrils closed with finger and thumb. “Detestable.”

  Walter Weld Hill was still holding his nostrils against the offending ethnic odor when they came to a black door at the end of a long corridor, before which two large men stood guard.

  At first Walter Weld Hill mistook them for LCN lawyers because they wore pinstripes. On second glance he noticed that the stripes were rather broad even for the lax standards of the day.

  And the men jammed into the suits looked rather on the order of dockworkers, Hill thought.

  Sol Greenglass stepped up to one of the sentries.

  “I am Mr. Greenglass of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone, representing Mr. Walter Weld Hill,” he announced.

  One of the men stepped aside to reveal the block letters “CRIME MINISTER” on the blank white door. The other opened the door and stuck his head inside.

  “Boss. Company. I think it’s the lawyers.”

  “Great,” boomed a gruff voice. “Wonderful. I love lawyers. Show ’em in. Show ’em right in.”

  The brute at the door signaled with the point of his jaw for them to enter.

  Walter Weld Hill allowed the senior partners to precede him. It would make his own entrance all the more impressive. And he wished to get this ordeal over with as soon as possible. In all the generations of Hills, he had never heard of this happening before. Squatters in this day and age. What was the world coming to?

  When Walter Weld Hill finally crossed the threshold, he found himself in a long conference room.

  There were some odd appointments, such as the rather Catholic portraits on the walls, and over in one corner, a large black stove that belonged in the back of a low-class restaurant. On one wall was a sign that said:

  WE MAKE MONEY THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY

  WE STEAL IT.

  “That’s not correct,” muttered Walter Weld Hill, his eyes going to the man rising at the far end of the table, just under the sign. He wore a sharkskin suit over a black shirt. His tie was white. A hopeless combination. Obviously unsophisticated.

  “Come in, come in,” said the man, gesturing broadly. “I’m Cadillac. Welcome to La Cosa Nostra, Incorporated.”

  Dead silence followed that statement. Every member of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone froze in midaction.

  The man in the sharkskin suit began chortling. “What?” he said. “You think I’m serious? It’s a joke. I was just kiddin’. Honest. Just a little joke to break the tension. Don’t be so serious all the time. It’s bad for the digestion.”

  No one laughed, but everyone resumed normal breathing.

  Sol Greenglass slammed his leather briefcase onto the conference table, saying, “Mr. Cadillac, I have here a summons to appear before the honorable judge John Joseph Markham of Dedham Superior Court.”

  “Hold your horses,” said the man in the sharkskin suit. “Which one of yous is Hill?”

  “I am Walter Weld Hill,” said Walter Weld Hill disdainfully.

  The man bustled out from behind the conference table. “Glad to meetcha,” he said, taking Hill’s right hand and levering it like a water pump. “These your lawyers?”

  “Of course,” said Hill, attempting to disengage.

  “Great. I never saw so many lawyers before in my life. They look like Jews. Are they Jews?”

  “I believe they are. What of it?”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean nothin’ by that. A lawyer is a lawyer, right? And Jews make great lawyers. They understand business. Know what I mean? That’s good when you’re having a sit-down.”

  “I imagine their contribution will be profound. Are you now ready to comply with my wishes?”

  The short brute of a man scrunched up his face, leaving a single eye to peep from the fleshy knot. “You gonna try to evict me?”

  “No, I am absolutely going to evict you, you squatter.”

  “Hey, I just happen to stand five-eleven. I’m not squat. Who you callin’ squat? I resent that remark.”

  The man was flouncing around the room like a dancing bear, throwing up his blunt-fingered hands and gesticulating with every word. He reminded Walter Weld Hill of the maître d’ at Polcari’s, an acceptable restaurant of the ethnic sort.

  “Resent it all you want,” he returned coldly, “but you are vacating these premises.”

  “Hey, don’t use that language on me. I’m from fuggin’ Brooklyn. You think I don’t know what them words mean? You think I don’t know what all these lawyers mean?”

  “I am sure that you do,” retorted Walter Weld Hill. He snapped his fingers. “Sol, the summons.”

  Sol Greenglass whipped out the legal document and presented it to the man who called himself Cadillac.

  “This is a summons to appear–”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much,” said the man called Cadillac impatiently, stuffing the summons into his suit coat. He beckoned toward Sol Greenglass. “You, come with me.”

  “What?”

  “Here,” said Cadillac, “lemme help you.”

  Sol Greenglass found himself being led out into the open side of the room. “The rest of yous, come on. I’m gonna show you all a little trick.”

  “We are not interested in your tricks,” said Walter Weld Hill in his sternest voice.

  “You’ll be interested in this. You, stand there. The rest of yous form a line. Yeah, like that.”

  Under the prodding and pushing of the boss of LCN, the entire legal staff of Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone was made to stand along one side of the long conference table. At the far end, Walter Weld Hill stood frowning. What was the man up to? he wondered.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” said Cadillac. “Now, I want every one of yous to turn and face me. Humor me, okay? I like bein’ humored.”

  Reluctantly, grumbling, the lawyers turned.

  Cadillac clapped his hands together. “Yeah. That’s good. Hill, you still back there?”

  Walter Weld Hill had turned as well. He stuck his head out from the twenty-deep phalanx of lawyers. “What is it?” he asked tightly.

  “I told you I’m from Brooklyn, right?”

  “Repeatedly.”

  “Down in Brooklyn, we got a riddle that covers situations like this.”

  “I doubt that.”

  The man called Cadillac reached down under the end of the conference table. He did not take his tiny eyes off Hill.

  “It goes like this,” said the man, withdrawing a forty-five-caliber machine gun so old it sported a drum magazine. With both hands he shouldered the weapon level to the exposed chest of the first man in line, the junior litigator, Weederman.

  Walter Weld Hill’s heart skipped a beat. Then he realized he was protected by no fewer than the bodies of twelve of the finest litigators this side of Worcester.

  “I am not afraid of you,” he said primly.

  “I ain’t told you the riddle yet.”

  “If you must.”

  Cadillac beamed a smile as broad as his namesake. “It goes, ‘How many lawyers does it take to stop a bullet?’” And then Cadillac cocked the old weapon.

  At the sound of the charging bolt being pulled back, the sturdy phalanx that was Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone gave out a collective gasp and broke for every exit. They stumbled over one another in their mad rush to leave the room, in some cases stepping out of their own expensive shoes.

  Suddenly Walter Weld Hill found himself staring down the maw of the Thompson submachine gun, his chest protected by nothing more substantial than his double-breasted suit.

  He swallowed.

  And as he swallowed, the man who called himself Cadillac growled, “The correct answer is, ‘None. ’Cause when the guns come out, the lawyers get lost.’ Any questions?”

  “Actually, I must be going,” said Walter Weld Hill, his knees shaking. “I have an appointment with bankruptcy court in less than an hour.”

  “Bankruptcy court? Gee. That’s too fuggin’ bad.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” said Walter Weld Hill, walking backward to the open door behind him. He continued walking backward until he rounded a corner and the machine gun was no longer in view. Then he twisted around and ran for the elevator, vowing that if he survived the coming financial debacle, he would move Hill Associates lock, stock, and barrel to a more hospitable business environment.

  Romania came immediately to mind.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “And then I said, ‘The correct fuggin’ answer is none.’ That’s when I pulled the fuggin’ tommy and stuck it in the first lawyer’s kisser. You shoulda seen ’em scramble. You would have thought they was cockroaches when the lights come on.”

  Raucous laughter filled the corporate boardroom of LCN in Quincy, Massachusetts. The Maggot snorted. Pink Eye tittered through his sharp nose.

  Don Carmine Imbruglia waved for silence and continued his story.

  “That’s when the stiff who owned this joint mumbles that he’s late for bankruptcy court and, get this, he exits the joint backwards! Like if he turns around he’s gonna pee his pants. His own joint, and he walks out of it backwards!”

  The laughter returned. Don Carmine joined in it. His squat body shook with merriment until tears squeezed from his squinched-shut eyes.

  It settled down only when Bruno the Chef ambled in carrying several bags of takeout food in his big paws.

  “Chow’s in, boss,” he said good-naturedly.

  “Great,” said Don Carmine, rubbing his hands together. “I’m so starved I could eat an Irishman, washed or not.”

  Everyone laughed. Don Carmine watched as Bruno the Chef brought out the food. As it was served to him on china taken from a cupboard, Don Carmine’s expression settled into the familiar lines of befuddlement it assumed when confronted with New England cuisine.

  “Did I order this?”

  “It’s supposed to be seafood marinara. I asked for seafood marinara. With linguine.”

  “This ain’t fuggin’ linguine. It looks like egg noodles.”

  “Maybe it’ll taste all right with the marinara sauce on it.”

  Don Carmine attempted a forkful. He spit it back into the plate. “Ptoo! You call this marinara sauce? There’s no garlic. Only onions.” He pawed through the remaining bags, extracting a cellophane package of sliced bread.

  “This fuggin’ looks like Wonder Bread,” he complained. “I don’t believe this. I can get better Italian bread down at the Cathay Pacific. This state in unbelievable. The chinks bake better bread than the wops.”

  “Want me to take it back, boss?” asked Bruno the Chef.

  “Later. Right now I wanna decent fuggin’ meal. Go cook me somethin’.”

  “Sure. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Clam chowder. Manhattan clam chowder. The red stuff. Fresh clams, too. And if I so much as chip a single tooth on a piece of shell, you’re gonna hear about it.”

  “No sweat, boss,” said Bruno the Chef, leaving the room to seek fresh clams.

  As he was going out, Vinnie (The Maggot) Maggiotto was coming in, clutching a grayish, slick sheet of paper.

  “I’m the fuggin’ Kingpin of Boston and I can’t get a decent meal,” Don Carmine was saying. “What happened to the respect we once got? I was fuggin’ born too fuggin’ late, I guess.” He spied the Maggot and asked, “What’s that?”

  “Fax from Don Fiavorante.”

  “Give it here,” said Don Carmine. He fingered the slick paper unhappily. “You’d think a classy guy like Don Fiavorante would spring for better paper to write on,” he muttered. “Stuff’s always waxy.”

  “Maybe it gets that way coming through the phone,” postulated the Maggot as Don Carmine read through the note carefully, moving his lips with every syllable.