The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  The rest of the time we walked and talked, about her three children, the state of the world, or my latest lab mishap.

  The air today was cold and fresh, perfect for mental acuity.

  I started a mental list.

  Number one: check noise—my reason for this trip to Lori’s building. I felt compelled to survey the outside area around her West Forty-eighth Street address, to see if there even was a fire escape, or a trash can that could have been knocked over in the alleged escape attempt I thought I’d heard.

  No one, I rationalized, could call that investigating.

  Number two: check TOMS. I needed to review the data on ozone depletion from TOMS, NASA’s Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer. I knew about the Montreal Protocol, implemented in the late 1980s. Member countries approved a plan to control the production and consumption of substances that can cause ozone depletion. The agreement had been amended to ultimately ban CFCs altogether, with consideration given to developing nations that might need time to improve quality-of-life technologies.

  What I hadn’t kept up on was the quantitative data. The last I’d heard, early in the new century, was that the earth had lost 3 percent of its ozone layer.

  Number three: brush up on ozone monitoring in the workplace. At the other end of the ozone spectrum was the problem of too much of it. In some industries, employees were at risk of serious overexposure to ozone inadvertently generated through their occupations.

  I wished I’d brought my laptop, but at the last minute, I’d given the space to a pile of science magazines (the only kind I read). I’d look up the locations of Internet cafés so I could do some research and have a coffee at the same time. I figured New York would have one on every corner.

  Number four: check violators. While I was there, roaming around in the ether, I might as well research some of the companies that had already been found in violation of the guidelines. I hoped that would lead me to other possible noncompliance spots: If Lori and Amber were about to expose anyone for violation of CFC regulations or ozone monitoring, it would be a powerful motive for murder. The penalties for smuggling CFCs or evading the special excise taxes on them were severe, sometimes including a prison term—an unwelcome prospect for a high-living CEO. The same was true for ozone monitoring violations.

  I didn’t linger long on the idea that it was Lori’s apartment that was the crime scene—and Lori who would be the more likely target in this scenario, not Amber. I swallowed hard. Surely no one would mistake the honey-haired Amber for the short, dark Lori Pizzano.

  My alibi was ready, in case I got caught doing more than what might be required to help Lori with the documentary. I’d tell my husband and my friends that I was preparing for my next Revere High School science class talk. In fact, I probably would use the material for that purpose, thus adding truthfulness to my résumé.

  I breathed easier.

  I used the long block between Eighth Avenue and Broadway to focus my attention on Lori’s building, looming ahead.

  From the outside, at a casual glance, the building showed no signs of a recent struggle, except for the presence of a uniformed officer on the front stoop. I walked past the building, then turned to pass it in the other direction. As far as I could tell, no one noticed this peculiar maneuver, not even the cop. Like the other pedestrians—the pretheater dinner crowd, I guessed—I kept my eyes guarded, not making eye contact with anyone, except for the occasional ’scuse me after a bump.

  On my second walk-by, I stopped in front of the narrow passageway between Lori’s building and the next one. I peered down the alley and took a few steps into it. A row of trash cans as long as my first helium-neon laser tube lined one wall. Fire escape steps and platforms stood out from the buildings on both sides of the alley, nearly meeting in the middle. The set of steps on Lori’s building stopped about three feet above one of the cans, next to a large Dumpster. I counted windows and saw broken flowerpots on the old metal landing at the fourth floor.

  Never did a dark, trash-filled alley look so good to me.

  Rumble. Crash. Crash.

  I heard the sounds again in my mind. I knew that if I still lived in California I’d have run for the doorjamb, thinking an earthquake was rumbling through.

  I shuddered at the idea that I might have shared Lori’s airy loft, even if only for a few seconds, with Amber Keenan’s killer. I wished I’d had the time to ask Amber what she’d gotten herself into lately, what might have caused Lori to worry about her.

  I looked up again at the fourth-story windows. I wished I’d been able to commandeer tanks full of oxygen, grasp Amber’s last breaths, and stretch them into enough for a lifetime.

  Matt was waiting for me in our room. He wanted to know how and why I’d snuck by him as he ushered Lori into a cab.

  “I thought you’d be visiting with her for a while,” I said.

  A brief huh, not a question, was his only utterance.

  “I left you a note,” I said, doing what I supposed many of Matt’s interviewees did during his silences—digging in deeper. In any case, I never was convinced that my simple OUT FOR A WHILE on a scrap of paper would suffice.

  “That’s what, not how, or why, or where.”

  I gauged the response seventy-thirty, teasing-serious. Making this calculation was an important skill I’d developed over our time together.

  “I needed some air?” I hadn’t meant it to be a question, but Matt’s frown, with its yellowish glow from the walls, intimidated me.

  “You’re aware this is not even my jurisdiction, let alone yours?”

  I could tell that What could you possibly mean by that? wouldn’t work. “I know, and I swear I did nothing even vaguely illegal.” I crossed my heart and saw the hint of a smile.

  Another huh from Matt.

  “Not even an obstruction of justice.”

  He held up his palm. “Okay.”

  It seemed too easy, but I didn’t question his willingness to drop the subject. I had a new topic ready.

  “Is it time for an ozone lesson?” I asked.

  A smile. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”

  Whew.

  “We’ll start with oxygen, which you already know is number eight on the periodic table. So it has?”

  “Eight protons in the nucleus.”

  Another inaudible whew. We’d had occasion to discuss the periodic table before this, and it was gratifying to know he’d retained some facts. On the other hand, I didn’t want to resort to kindergarten tactics and make a big deal out of a small success. Teaching one’s husband, I’d learned, is a tricky business.

  “Ozone is a simple molecule, made of three oxygen atoms. It’s just O3.” I showed him three fingers to reinforce the image. “You probably already knew that.”

  “I didn’t.”

  I reached for the pen and pad of paper by the phone and started a sketch, severely handicapped by the unavailability of PowerPoint. A wiggly circle for the earth. Four more or less concentric rings around it for the layers above the surface: our atmosphere. I shaded an area. “The ozone layer is in the second layer, the stratosphere.”

  Matt scrunched his face. Thinking. Remembering. “Let’s see, ninth-grade science—Mr. Russo, who was really hired to be our field hockey coach. We went to the finals that year. Beat Winthrop, as I recall.”

  I poked my index finger into Matt’s chest. “Well, therein lies the problem. Mr. field-hockey-coach Russo. We ought to be hiring teachers who know science and let them wing their way through sports coaching, instead of the other way around.”

  Matt grinned. I knew he agreed.

  Matt was perched on the heating/cooling unit, while I sat on the chair in front of him. I had the superior view. Outside our window was a dense group of New York buildings, their floors and windows lit in a random fashion. Some windows were dark; others offered a bright look into an office or hotel room. I loved the geometry of the view: thousands of rectangular windows, with fire escape ladders slashing diagonally acr
oss them at intervals; at street level, an array of conic-section awnings decorated with a street number or the name of a restaurant. In this holiday season, more than the usual number of lights flickered at the tops of skyscrapers.

  I stared at small office Christmas trees and festive lighted garlands strung around rooftop gardens.

  A mesmerizing scene.

  But I had a student in front of me. I picked up where I left off. “The ozone layer acts like a blanket, absorbing the harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun.” I drew the sun at the edge of the paper. The completed drawing looked like one that could adorn the refrigerator of a family with a six-year-old. “Without this ozone cover, when the ozone layer is depleted, in other words, we’re exposed to serious sunburn and potential risk of skin cancer.”

  I saw Matt’s attention drift. I needed to remember to limit the length of science sentences.

  “That was nice today, by the way, getting Lori to talk about oxygen,” he said.

  I waved my hand in the air. “Science cures.”

  “So you say.” He leaned forward and kissed me. “I’m trying to compliment you. You put Lori at ease, and that was important.”

  I nodded and whispered a thank-you. The best I could do—I hadn’t had a lot of training in accepting praise.

  “Were you able to find out what Lori did not tell the police? Whatever it was that Amber was too deep into?” I asked, putting quote marks in the air around the last phrase.

  “ ’Fraid not. But we’ll see her again tomorrow.”

  Matt stood, came behind me, and put his arms around me. I leaned back, my ear at his heart.

  We looked at our watches. Almost ten to eight.

  In our immediate future, for the Galiganis, Matt, and me, was dinner again in Little Italy. Sure, New York City was known for a wide variety of ethnic restaurants, and you might think we’d try a different neighborhood on our third night. But not two Galiganis (one née Zarelli), a Gennaro, and a Lamerino (me, joining the 17 percent of New England brides who did not adopt their spouse’s name). We were drawn like iron filings to the magnetic Italian neighborhood just east of SoHo.

  Frank Galigani had the idea that trying a new Italian establishment each night was diversity enough. He’d ticked them off on his fingers. “You’ve got your Sicilian, your Neapolitan, your Abruzzese . . .”

  I guessed that Lori, who’d told us that on Saturday she’d feasted on a Bavarian breadbasket for breakfast at the Neue Galerie off Fifth, and sushi for lunch in Chelsea, would have laughed if she’d been there to hear it.

  “Too bad we have to leave,” I said.

  Matt squeezed my shoulders. “Later.”

  I gave him my best smile. “Later.”

  CHAER FOUR

  Zio Giovanni’s must have been the narrowest restaurant in this city of extremes. There was room for one short row of tables for four along one wall, and one row of tables for two along the other.

  So, when the marching band came through, we barely had room to lift our forks without pulling elbows in, close to our bodies.

  Seven old men, all looking like my father, Marco Lamerino, in Santa outfits with floppy hats, marched in with big brass instruments. The Mulberry Street Marching Band (a name we created for them, on the spot) lined up in the skinny aisle and played holiday music for about ten minutes.

  The four of us joined the other diners in singing the words now and then, when we knew them, and humming when we didn’t.

  The medley was eclectic. “Silent Night” morphed quickly into “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and then back to “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” The group was gone before anyone could think of tipping them.

  “I didn’t think they did things like that anymore,” Frank said after they’d left.

  “They do everything in New York,” said our young waiter.

  I believed him.

  The four of us had dinner together in Revere so often, it seemed quite natural for Matt and me to be sitting across a red-checked tablecloth from Rose and Frank Galigani in New York City. We’d selected Zio Giovanni’s mostly because it was a nongentrified restaurant, with scuffed, uneven floors—increasingly hard to find, with blond wood paneling and ferns creeping into the neighborhood’s dining facilities. Another plus: Zio Giovanni’s had no hawker on the sidewalk recruiting customers.

  We resorted to our firmly established rhythm as each of us took a turn at leading the conversation. Like a four-way How was your day?

  Frank, who’d worked in one or another aspect of mortuary service since he was in college, always had stories of questionable appropriateness for mealtime. His particularly tough challenge of reshaping the mouth of a young woman who died in a head-on collision. A new glass trocar, providing visible flow of the fluids drawn from his “clients.” A state-of-the-art technique for sculpting an ear out of wax and pieces of tape and plastic to replace one lost in a shooting accident.

  Tonight he described a missing nose on the last client he’d prepped before our trip. That he simultaneously hacked off a piece of salami from the antipasto tray only added to the realism of the story.

  Rose announced that she would enlighten us on the mortician’s role in disaster preparedness. After she and Frank had breakfasted (while I was alone in a creaky elevator) with their daughter-in-law Karla’s parents, Grace and Roland Sasso, they’d met with a woman who was a member of a DMORT—Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team.

  Rose started, however, with a report on the Sassos, their oldest son Robert’s in-laws. For Rose, family always came first. I was glad to be part of hers.

  “Grace and Roland are such wonderful people. They’ve lived in that same apartment building all their lives. They wouldn’t give it up for anything. Last year—”

  “DMORT, Rose?” Frank said. I figured he didn’t want to waste a perfectly good turn at conversation with family gossip.

  “DMORT. It was so interesting. It’s not something that gets publicized,” Rose said, neatly buttering a warm slice of Italian bread that I knew she would never finish eating. My plate of eggplant, on the other hand, would soon be so clean as to look unused by the time the kitchen crew got to it.

  “You don’t necessarily want people knowing that a bunch of embalmers are standing around an accident scene, or whatever,” Frank said. “We’re thinking of joining the regional group in Massachusetts. They need funeral directors, MEs, X-ray technicians, fingerprint specialists, you name it.”

  Frank paused for a sip of wine and Rose stepped in again. “When there are mass fatalities—like in an airplane crash or an earthquake or a flood or—” Rose paused, her face taking on a sad expression, and we all automatically looked south.

  “Or an attack,” Frank said softly, patting Rose’s hand. “We’re talking about large numbers of people who need to be identified and stored.”

  “Stored?” I asked. I’d been a tenant in the Galiganis’ mortuary—a live one, that is—until I moved in with Matt, so I might have known better than to ask about storage. I figured it out in time to hold off an explanation. “Never mind,” I said.

  “Not exactly what you find listed in the I Love New York tour book,” Frank joked.

  Matt had nothing to report. He confessed he’d napped through one of his conference sessions and slipped out for coffee with a buddy during another. He deferred to me, to report on what he called “the oxygen front.”

  “What I don’t get,” Rose said, “is how come we survived the old, unregulated days. I mean, we sat on Revere Beach for hours without sunscreen number such-and-such, and we ate raw cookie dough, right? Suddenly all the things we thought were okay when we were kids aren’t safe anymore? Like these CDCs, or whatever was making our refrigerators run. Were we that stupid? Or are we being paranoid now?”

  Rose always got to the heart of things, in spite of mixing up acronyms. Understandable that CFC would be replaced by CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, in her memory, given her profession.

  “Very good questions,”
I said sincerely. “A little of both, I suppose. CFCs were a boon when they first came on the market—around the time we were kids.”

  Rose patted her nicely highlighted hair. “Maybe when you all were kids,” she said, with a wide grin. She wore a short jacket with fringe on the collar and cuffs and all the way down the front—the new frayed look that I didn’t understand. Especially when you added a large faux flower, constructed from more of the frayed fabric and pinned to her lapel. My black washable knit outfit came from an outlet store that specialized in travel clothes.

  “About CFCs,” I said. I knew my minutes were numbered, so I kept on track. “We used to think CFCs—like Freon—were ideal for both industrial and home refrigerators, among other things. They were so much better than the stuff they replaced. Originally, sulfur dioxide and ammonia were the refrigerants of choice. So everyone was thrilled to substitute something nontoxic, nonflammable, noncorrosive, and very stable, like CFCs. Then we realized that the chlorine part of the CFC molecule was a hidden hazard.”

  I surveyed my audience, all paying rapt attention to their food and drink. Frank caught the last segment of spaghetti on his fork. Matt picked at the crumbs on his bread plate, looking at the basket as if deciding whether to have another piece. Rose sipped water after unobtrusively swallowing a calcium supplement.

  “I think I’ll leave it at that,” I said, returning to my eggplant. “Keep you all in chlorinated suspense.”

  A laugh all around.

  Rose was ready to tell us of their visit with the Sassos, whose residence was in the West Seventies, not far from the American Museum of Natural History (I could live with that).