The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  [patient gets up and walks out]

  END EXCERPT.

  “That one there’s crazy,” Orfeo said. “Don’t go near him, even if Dey says to.”

  “I work for him,” Laurel said. “If he asks, how can I . . . ?”

  Orfeo gave her the serious stare, the one she used to get when he thought she’d made a wrong move on the chessboard. “Dey doesn’t ask; he orders.”

  “Then—”

  “Listen.” Orfeo’s voice dropped to the level of a stage whisper. “Dey likes to test newbies. And that’s what you are at the moment: a newbie. He’ll want to get at you, crack you open, see what’s really inside. That’s the only way he’ll know whether he has use for you.”

  “So I should refuse.”

  Orfeo rolled his eyes. “Dear God, yes. Vinny Fish is poison. Especially with girls.”

  “So . . .”

  “If he gives you any kind of trouble, kick him in the nuts.”

  She laughed. “I can do that.”

  Orfeo grunted. “Yeah, you can.”

  That first morning was filled with, as Melville might write, learning the ropes, which was what every shoreline carouser, dragooned or shanghaied shipman had to do in order to raise and lower the sails. Navigating the rigging—the ropes—was a complicated task and a necessary one if the new seaman was to earn his paltry keep. So it was with Laurel, familiarizing herself with the workings of Dey’s criminal enterprise.

  She was astonished that Orfeo was a criminal working for the boss of a criminal organization, but when she asked him about it, he simply shrugged and said, “It’s hard enough to provide for your family in this city, Helene, without ethics tying your hands.”

  At first, it was pushing papers, for in those days Dey’s machine was making a slow and painful transition from paper to electronic files. Of course she tried to make heads or tails of the papers she was given to file, but it was only when she was able to spend stolen moments here and there at the filing cabinets themselves that she began to piece together Dey’s business model. She saw right away that it was bloated and inefficient; he was into too many businesses, and for whatever reason, he wasn’t keeping track of them. That was even before she found that he was keeping separate financial books, that he was laundering money from the Mulberry Street offices through the business in the Empire State Building. Following that, she created a third set in case the company was audited. Those moments were fraught with all kinds of peril. People were always checking up on her, so the work she really wanted to do was difficult in the extreme. Nevertheless, she began to ferret out things she was certain Dey’s crew didn’t know about and Dey himself never wanted her to see.

  As for Orfeo, he was more often than not away from the offices on some Dey-related item or other. When he was in, he inhabited a corner of Dey’s office he seemed to own. Sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair tilted back against the wall, he lovingly oiled a baseball glove, creating a pocket into which, on occasion, he slammed a baseball. A genuine Louisville Slugger rested in the corner, keeping him company.

  Dey’s enterprise occupied the second floor of a Mulberry Street building on the northern edge of Chinatown. He owned the building; in fact, as she later discovered, he owned the entire block. This place was a far cry from the dog and pony show offices he maintained in the Empire State Building for prospective buyers of the companies he was selling. She never did see the uptown premises.

  Like much of Mulberry Street and its surrounds, the ground floor of Dey’s building had been infiltrated by Chinese immigrants—canny businessmen with deep pockets. Their trade was in sports betting, which had grown out of old-school numbers running. The money to be made in sports betting and, especially, the control of fantasy sports leagues had exploded. These two Chinese brothers were all over it. Dey didn’t mind, as long as he got his taste of the action, but there were continuing negotiations as to the percentage he was entitled to.

  Late one morning five or six weeks after Laurel started working for Dey, she heard him say, “I swear I’m going to kill them!” He strode out of his office, Orfeo a pace behind him. Looking around, his gaze fell on Laurel, and he snapped his fingers. “You. Messer. Take a walk with us.”

  Falling in behind Orfeo and Dey, she went down the steep flight of wooden stairs, filthy as sin. Dey opened a dented steel door, and they all stepped into the Chinese betting parlor. Fifteen bony men sat bent over three rows of workstations. They looked like workers in old photos of Chinese sweatshops, the computers subbing for sewing machines. They looked up in unison, which would have been amusing except for the grim expression on Dey’s face.

  Dey headed for the far side of the space, the offices of the two brothers, glassed off from the rest of the business. The brothers looked like twins: thin, medium height, black hair slicked back off their wide foreheads. They even lifted their heads at the same time. At Dey’s silent signal, Orfeo went directly to the brother on the left, smashed his fist into his face. He stepped back while his boss commenced to beat the man senseless. When his brother leapt up to intervene, Orfeo, who now guarded the open doorway, hefted his Louisville Slugger. Laurel hadn’t seen him carrying it when he’d emerged from Dey’s office. He slapped the meat of the barrel several times into the open palm of his left hand, a menacing gesture that shocked Laurel as much as the punch he had delivered. She had never seen this violent side of Orfeo before, had never even been given an inkling of its existence. Could this be the same man who played chess with her, who had bought her a guitar, who had played Concierto de Aranjuez with her? It seemed impossible, but here he was. When the brother tried to push Orfeo aside, Orfeo brought the bat down on the top of his head. It was neither a hard nor a soft blow. It was perfectly calibrated to send the man to the floor, eyes blinking slowly and heavily as they tried to focus.

  Laurel, scarcely breathing, feeling distinctly nauseated, heard Dey say, “When I tell you it’s twenty-five percent, it’s twenty-five, not twenty-three, not twenty-one. Now the rate’s thirty. Got it?” Bending over, he pulled out the man’s shirt and wiped his knuckles on it, streaks of crimson against the starched white sheen.

  “Lunch,” Dey said as, with a subdued flourish, he led them back across the ground floor and out onto Mulberry Street.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  From a distance, Laurel watched Jimmy Self’s body being loaded into the back of an EMT ambulance. From a distance, she watched the cops milling around the cordoned-off bench where Jimmy Self had shot himself to death. As if they would find some clue. There was no clue, none at all. From the fringes of the small crowd that had gathered to crane their necks, to gawk, to take photos with their cell phones, to snap selfies at the scene of the crime, she watched. Always watching, always at a distance, always on the edges. At the border. Disengaged, observing as Dey beat the living crap out of the Chinese bookmaker, as Orfeo with perfect betrayal beat down the twin. Orfeo the intellectual chess player, the gentle guitarist with the voice of an angel who cared for his family. Dey’s enforcer. She recalled in vivid detail leaving Orfeo’s apartment after being taken in by the family, Nonna speaking to her in the church as if she were one of Nonna’s grandchildren, how a part of the family she felt even while she knew she was an outsider. How difficult life was sometimes, she thought now. How it mocked your choices, how it shoved impediments in your path just to test your resolve, to see how much it could fuck you up. She had come to Orfeo with only revenge in her heart, but he had taken her in, loved her, protected her. In his apartment, as part of his family, she had been buffeted by so many conflicting emotions. It had taken all her strength, all her courage to hew to her chosen path, to do what in her heart—her very soul—she knew was the right thing.

  It was then, in the last moment of remembrance, that her gaze returned to the present, and she saw her suitcase, set against the side of the station. She went and retrieved it, thinking, Jesus, Jimmy, you thought of everything.

  The ambulance doors slammed closed, the EMTs mount
ed its running boards and swung inside, and the vehicle drove off. Where would Jimmy Self wind up? On the ME’s stainless steel slab, in cold storage like an old fur coat, in an unmarked grave, or scattered at the back of the crematorium. She preferred to think not. Jimmy Self wound up on that bench, waiting for the fine coffee she would seek out and bring to him. If he was anywhere, he was there.

  The bullets from his .38 seemed to weigh her down all through the cab ride into town, but she was reluctant to rid herself of them. She had nowhere to go, nowhere she wanted to go. She especially did not want to seek the company of others. The taxi let her off at the edge of Thomas A. Edison Park. Within a loose copse of trees she found a wooden picnic table. She sat for a while, doing nothing but listening to the rustle of the wind through the treetops. She tried not to think. But images of Richard and Bella and Jimmy Self reeled through her mind like drunken ghosts. At length, lids drooping, she lay down on the table and cried herself to sleep.

  It was too early in the morning to know what kind of day it was going to be. The sun, white through the mist rising to meet it, cast a silvery sheen across the trees and rooftops, as if it were the moon, as if it were night for day.

  “You hear what happened at the train station, miss?” the cabbie asked.

  Laurel stared dully out the window. “What happened?” Was she even listening?

  “Man shot himself, so I heard.”

  He was looking at her in the rearview mirror. She felt sweat break out under her arms, chill the back of her neck. His avid curiosity repelled her.

  “First I’m hearing.”

  His face fell in clear disappointment. “Wow, though. First time we’ve had something like that at the station, I can tell you.” His eyes back on the road. “Girl missing, Muslims being rounded up. A hit-and-run. And all in the same family. Now this suicide.” He scratched his head. “Don’t know what this world is coming to.”

  Laurel leaned forward, arms crossed over the top of the front bench seat. “I’m starving,” she said to the cabbie. He was wiry, balding, with ears that stuck out like Dumbo’s. “Is there anything decent open at this hour?”

  “Well, there’s a Bob Evans.” The years had scraped away much of his flesh, as a sculptor chisels away at a block of marble, leaving only what was essential. “Also an IHOP that’s popular with the out-of-town folk.”

  “No, no, no. I want to go . . . okay, where d’you go for breakfast.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No question there. I’d go to Nestors Deli on Michigan and Roemer. They open at five. Mornings, everyone I know stops in there. It’s a real mill and swill.”

  “Now we’re talking. Take me there.” She settled back in the seat, meager supply of bonhomie used up.

  “Are you okay, miss?”

  “Sure. Fine. My father just died.”

  “Condolences, miss. Was he a good man?”

  The official cause of death was a stroke, but she knew better. Her father had died of a broken heart. How many nights after her mother had abandoned them had she heard him sobbing in his bedroom, calling his wife’s name like a ghost haunting their house? “A good man. To the best of his abilities, yes.”

  “Yeah. Well, it’s good, you know—good you remember him that way. My kids don’t get me at all.” He laughed, trying to goose the joke along, then shrugged. “I mean, who gets anybody these days—am I right?”

  He probably was, but she was suddenly too tired to answer. She’d gone the whole night without sleeping more than twenty minutes at a time, and she was, in fact, starving. For most people tragedy eviscerated their appetite, but for her the reverse was true. She stared out at the row houses, attached like the cars on a toy train that had lost its engine. A police cruiser passed by, the third she’d seen since leaving the station.

  A sudden thought occurred to her. She drew out Richard’s mobile phone. She had kept the battery fully charged just in case Bella tried to reach her father. She went to the texts, found nothing new. She typed in,

  Bella, where are you?

  Pressed the send tab, waited. And waited. No reply. She put the phone away but was careful to keep it on. You never knew.

  She looked up at the back of the cabbie’s head. “Hey, the girl who disappeared . . . whose mother killed herself . . . didn’t her father just get killed in a hit-and-run? You know anything about the family—Mathis, right?”

  “Heck, everyone in Dearborn knows about them. Damn shame, the suicide, the accident coming right on top of the girl’s disappearance.”

  “They haven’t found her yet?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “You know anything about the mother?”

  “Mrs. Mathis? She—” He broke off abruptly as he pulled up to the curb outside Nestors. Twisted his torso to look at her directly. “Say, what are you, a reporter?”

  “That’s right. My editor sent me here to do, you know, an in-depth human-interest piece on the aftermath of the double tragedy. That’s why I asked about Mrs. Mathis. I’d really like to know more about her.”

  “Good luck with that,” the cabbie said.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Story is she went nuts. Started right after the daughter was born, people say.” He shrugged. “People say a lotta things—ain’t that right. But Mrs. Mathis, there was . . .” He shrugged again. “Let’s put it this way: not to speak ill of the dead, but no one was all too surprised when she killed herself, if you catch my meaning.”

  Maggie obscured, hidden, lost like the figures she and Richard had hoped to find in the tomb guarded by fanged Cul and Culsans; like those figures she was made of darkness and night. All unseen by Laurel; all gone now. Figments, not even ghosts.

  “You want to talk to Rosie Menkins,” the cabbie went on. “At the hospital.” He nodded toward Nestors. “At this hour, chances are she’ll be here, though, sucking down coffee like her life depended on it. I suppose if I did what she does, I’d be sucking down coffee by the gallon.”

  Laurel handed over the fare, plus a generous tip. “What does she do at the hospital?”

  “Trauma nurse. The things she sees day in, day out. This town can be quiet, but it can also be violent—know what I mean? Yeah, and because it was Rosie who took care of Mrs. Mathis while she was in the hospital during her first OD attempt.” He shook his head, then unfolded the money and gave her a little two-finger salute. “Thanks, miss.” He came around, opened the door, handed over her suitcase. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “What?” Halfway out of the cab, Laurel caught herself. “Thanks, yeah.”

  Meals with Dey were lavish affairs. The insider crew invariably repaired to Via Veneto, one of the last remaining authentic Italian restaurants in what Dey half-jokingly, half-bitterly called TIFI—Tiny Fucking Italy. Large and square, it had a black-and-white-checked tile floor; a pressed-tin ceiling from the turn of the nineteenth century, now painted maroon; and dark wood panels that rose halfway up the ocher plaster walls. It was so much like a set out of The Godfather that Laurel could imagine Michael Corleone coming out of the toilets with a handgun, grips taped, serial number filed off.

  Lighting, from what looked like giant inverted mushrooms, was deliberately dim, curtains drawn across the windows. Unlike the other red-sauce Neapolitan joints sprinkled around it, the food at Via Veneto was Roman, as excellently prepared as it had been forty years ago. Old-fashioned recipes from the time when its namesake had been Rome’s main artery for a glittering nightlife led by the gods of that golden era of Italian film: Fellini, Mastroianni, Loren, and Ekberg.

  The Bloody Lunch, as Laurel was to call it in memory, lasted well over two hours, Dey ordering course after course. Orfeo sat next to him and she across from him. They were in the right rear corner, Dey’s appointed position beneath the watchful gaze of Burt Lancaster as Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina. Laurel recognized the prince, having read The Leopard in its native Italian. She thought Lancaster a fine choice for
the beautiful film version of the novel.

  When Dey was in residence, no one was seated at the adjacent tables, no matter how crowded the restaurant got. Regulars who were waiting never complained, and those tourists who did were promptly sent on their way. Dey paid the owner top dollar for those four tops.

  Following the antipasti, Dey wiped his greasy lips, impaled Laurel with his dark gaze. “Orfeo here tells me you’re quite the genius.”

  She didn’t know how to respond to that, so she kept her mouth shut. She had avoided Orfeo’s gaze ever since the incident at the Chinese bookmakers’. “He claims you can do anything.”

  She kept her gaze steady, unblinking.

  “So how about a demonstration.”

  “What, here?” Orfeo said but kept to himself whatever else he was going to say when his boss’s hand cut across the space between them.

  Laurel nodded. “Whatever you say.” Way down in the pit of her stomach, the serpent of unknowing began to uncoil.

  “Under the table, then.” Dey smirked. “On your knees.” The smirk bloomed into a grin. “Crawl.”

  Laurel, working hard to keep from blinking, did not move.

  “Well?”

  “No,” she said.

  “No?” Dey echoed. “‘Whatever you say,’ you told me.”

  “I lied.”

  “My people don’t lie to me.”

  “Sue me.” What had gotten into her? Was she channeling Michael Corleone?

  Dey reached into his suit jacket, laid a gleaming silver-plated .22 on the table, its muzzle pointed in her direction.

  All of a sudden, Laurel felt the urgent need to urinate. Her heart hammered painfully against the cage of her ribs. “I work for you. I won’t blow you.”

  “Often, with girls, it’s one and the same.”

  You demeaning shit. You’ll rue the day we ever met. She stood up. Choosing her words very carefully, she said, “If I walk away, or if you kill me, you’ll never find out how useful I can be to you.”