“As you can see, no one was hurt,” Mr. Acar spoke up, forcing a tight smile onto his face. “The window is easily replaced. So there is no trouble.”
“Did either of you see who threw it?”
“We saw nothing,” he replied crisply. “It was one of our quiet moments. I was in the back room replenishing some supplies for the men’s lavatory. And Nema was-”
“Where were you, Mrs. Acar?” Des asked, not liking the way he was trying to stampede her. The man was a bit too anxious for her to pack up and go.
“Restocking my case,” Nema replied, indicating the glass case next to the cash register, which was filled with exotic homemade pastries.
“You didn’t see it happen?”
“I heard the crash of broken glass. And I ducked. I saw… nothing,” she said, glancing meekly at her husband. “Then I heard a car pull away very rapidly, a screech of tires. That is all.”
“Did you get a make or license number of the car?”
“No, this was not possible. It was gone before I could get a look.”
“Which way was the car heading when it left-back toward town?”
“The other way, I believe. I am not positive.”
Des went to the door and glanced outside. On this stretch of Old Shore there were no businesses on the other side of the road, just an overgrown tangle of vines, creepers, and wild berries. About a hundred yards past the Citgo, heading away from town, there was a sharp left turn onto Burnham Road, a narrow, residential lane that snaked its way through some old farms and ended up back in the village. Whoever did this most likely turned there and was gone in aflash. Probably two kids in a pickup-one drives, the other crouches in back and throws the stone. Swamp Yankees, if she had to guess. Indigenous lost boys with a hate thing for immigrants. Especially immigrants who were operating a successful new business.
“Have you folks had any trouble like this before?” Des asked Mr. Acar.
“No trouble at all, Trooper,” he answered. “Everyone has been very welcoming. And, while your presence is greatly appreciated, I wish you’d not pursue this matter any further. It will only draw more attention toward it, which we do not consider desirable. We shall happily bear the cost of replacing the glass. As you can see, this gentleman is already helping.”
Des shoved her horn-rims up her nose, and said, “Look, I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Acar-”
“Please, call me Nuri,” he purred, smiling at her ingratiatingly. More than ingratiatingly. The man was starting to ogle her long form right in front of his wife.
“Nuri, a crime has been committed here,” she said, her stomach muscles tightening involuntarily. The smarm wasn’t just undressing her with his eyes, he was licking her. “I have to file a report-that’s my job. Furthermore, the message on that stone is an obvious reference to the attack on the World Trade Center. We’ve got a task force operating out of the state’s attorney’s office that specializes in hate crimes such as this.”
“But who would hate us?” he asked her imploringly. “We are Turkish people, peaceful people. Turkey is America’s good friend.”
“You and I know that, but the morons who did this may not be too up on their international coalitions. Besides which,” she added, glancing at Nema’s headscarf, “you are Muslims, and that makes you different. Some people don’t care for different. I happen to know a little bit about what that’s like. I also know that when this kind of thing happens, it doesn’t just hurt you, it hurts the entire community. Look, let me show you something, okay?”
She went back out to her cruiser and fished around in her briefcase for the four-by-seven laminated Hate Crime Response Card that theConnecticut State Police had developed in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League. When she returned with it the Acars were talking heatedly to one other. They broke it off at once. Des had a definite feeling that Nema was more anxious to cooperate than her husband was. Clearly, he didn’t want to involve the law at all. How come? Was something else going on here-say, somebody running a protection racket on him?
“Please, listen to this,” she said, reading to them from the laminated card. “It defines a hate crime as ‘a criminal act against a person or property in which the perpetrator chooses the victim because of the victim’s real or perceived race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or gender.’ ” Des glanced up at the Acars, who were staring at her now in tight-lipped silence. “That’s why the task force needs to be brought in. They know the different hate groups and how they operate. They’ll know if someone’s been pulling this elsewhere around the state. It might be part of a pattern.”
“Foolish boys,” Mr. Acar sniffed at her dismissively. “Just a prank by foolish boys.”
“You’re probably right,” Des said, although she did have some nagging doubts. Why during daylight? Early afternoon was not the local bad boys’ usual hour for committing random acts of stupidity-late night was. “But this way we’ll know for sure, okay?”
“As you wish,” Nuri Acar said with weary resignation.
A customer in a BMW pulled up at a gas pump out front. Mr. Acar darted outside to help, grateful for the chance to get away from her.
Des was just as happy to see him go. One of the things in life that she was truly bad at was being civil to people who she thought were creeps. Get along. That was the Deacon’s motto, and he had ridden it all the way to the tippity toppity-deputy superintendent of the Connecticut State Police, highest-ranking black man in the state’s history. But Des was not her father, and that was why she wasn’t working homicides anymore. At age twenty-eight, Des had been Connecticut’s great nonwhite hope-the only black woman in the state to make lieutenant on the Major Crime Squad. She had produced, too. Outperformed every single man in the Central District. Except she didn’t get along with the so-called Waterbury mafia-the inner circle of Italian-American males who pretty much ran things in the state police. They liked to have their big, fat egos stroked, especially by the pretty girls. Des hadn’t played along, hadn’t respected them. And they could tell. And when the chance came to knife her, they had.
“May I offer you a coffee?” Nema asked, smiling at her uncertainly. “A baklava, perhaps?”
“I’m all set, thanks,” Des said, as Kevin began hammering the plywood into place over the broken window.
“I regret the circumstances, but I am so pleased to meet you at long last. Your friend is my friend, after all.”
“My friend?”
“Mr. Mitch Berger,” Nema said. “He is a fine, fine man. And one of my very best pastry customers.”
“I’ll just bet he is,” Des said, her eyes scanning the case of sweets. Some were covered with powdered sugar, just like the powdered sugar he’d had on his collar at lunch. So this was where he came to blow huge holes in his diet. It did occur to Des, standing there at the counter, that Mitch was at heart a fat little boy and always would be. Still, if this was the worst kind of lie he was capable of then she was lucky and she damned well knew it.
“Such a modest gentleman,” Nema added. “No airs, despite his prestigious position with the newspaper. And quite the gourmet. Very discerning.”
“That he is.” Des did not mention his penchant for eating potloads of his god-awful American chop suey, or that she had once found a box of Great Starts microwave sausage-and-egg breakfast burritos in his freezer. She did not want to shatter any illusions, or slow Nema down. The lady was working her way up to telling her something.
“Nuri does not mean to be difficult,” she finally said, clearing her throat uneasily. “We wish only to blend in. Surely you can understand that.”
“Absolutely,” Des said, because she could understand. She justcouldn’t blend in. “Your husband said he was in back when it happened. You were here behind the counter?”
“Yes, that is right.”
“Sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me, one friend to another?”
Nema glanced nervously ou
t the glass doors at her husband. “No, nothing.”
Clearly, the lady was holding back. She was also frightened. Of what? Who? “Well, if you remember anything…” Des handed Nema her card and urged her to give her a call, knowing she never would. Then she bagged and tagged the rock, which would go to the Westbrook Barracks along with her report. The task force would take it from there.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of canvassing.
Mr. Acar was washing the BMW’s windshield. She tipped her big hat to him politely. He acknowledged her gesture with an equally polite wave. She got into her cruiser and eased it down Old Shore to that quick left onto Burnham, where she parked on the shoulder and got out. She knelt and inspected the pavement carefully for fresh skid marks. Saw none.
Three old farmhouses were clustered there on Burnham not far from Old Shore Road. No one was home at the first house. At the second house she managed to wake up a young man who’d worked the overnight shift at Millstone, the nuclear power plant in Water ford. He hadn’t heard anyone speeding by his house in the past hour and was very grumpy about saying so.
Des approached the third house with some reluctance. This one belonged to Miss Barker, an elderly spinster who had called Des twice in past weeks with dire emergencies. A prowler who turned out to be a meter reader from Connecticut Light and Power, and a suspicious-looking hoodlum dumping toxic waste in the marsh who was, in fact, a marine biologist with the Department of Environmental Protection. Still, Miss Barker wasn’t a bad person, just lonely and scared. And she missed nothing that went on out on her street.
It took the old girl a while to get to the door. She didn’t move verywell, which was why Des hadn’t tried pressing a kitten on her-she was too likely to trip over it and fall. She was a slender, frail thing with Q-Tip hair, partial to pastel-colored pantsuits. Today she was pretty in pink. The scent of Miss Barker’s heavy, fruity perfume wafted out of the doorway with her. She wore so much of it that Des got lightheaded if she went inside the house.
“Sure, it’s those darned kids,” she responded promptly after Des had explained the purpose of her visit. “They all come tearing around that corner too fast. Especially at night. I hear their tires screeching when I’m lying here in my bed. I’m afraid of what’ll happen, dear, I don’t mind saying. One of those fool boys is going to smash right into the side of my bedroom some night. The explosion will kill me dead in my bed. Incinerate me sure as I’m standing-”
“This would have happened within the past hour, Miss Barker,” Des said, trying to rein her in.
“We ought to have a speed bump out there to slow those boys down, but do you think they listen to me at town hall? I’ve only been paying property taxes here since 1946, never missed a single payment.”
“Miss Barker, did you hear any screeching tires within the past hour?”
“Why, yes, right in the middle of All My Children, which I don’t know why I still watch. Loyalty, I guess. Not a very popular virtue anymore, is it?”
“Did you see what type of vehicle it was?”
“I absolutely did not see anyone,” Miss Barker said with a sudden flash of indignation. “So, naturally, I would not have the slightest idea what type of vehicle it was. How could I?”
Des peered at her in surprise. This was a lady who always butted in, never out. Why the dumb act? First Nema Acar, now her. What was this? “Well, did it sound more like a car or a truck?”
“More like a car,” she replied after a moment’s hesitation. “The pickups have those huge tires now with the big treads that make so much noise. Why do they need such huge tires? My daddy drove a truck his whole life, never a single accident, and his tires were justnormal, proper tires.” Miss Barker paused, her pale pink tongue flicking across her thin, dry lips. “But I really couldn’t say anything for sure.”
Des didn’t press her any further. Just thanked Miss Barker for her time and started back toward her cruiser, puzzled and frustrated. So much so that she could feel the beginnings of a deep blue funkadelic haze coming over her.
My job is pointless and stupid. My entire existence is pointless and stupid. I am wasting my life.
She knew the real reason why she was feeling this way. Sure she did. But knowing why didn’t make her feel one bit better.
She got back in her ride and cranked up the air conditioner and sat there glowering through her windshield at the huge old sycamore that grew in Miss Barker’s front yard. It was so splendid and lovely that it actually seemed to be mocking her with its presence. Either that or she was going totally nutso. She lunged for her cell phone and called her short-relief man. Whenever she needed a save, she reached out for him. As his phone rang, Des sat there wondering what would happen to her if Mitch Berger were not in her life right now. She would go right down the drain, that’s what.
But he must never know this-he thinks I’m the one who has it all together.
His phone machine answered. She waited, waited, waited for the beep and said, “Hi, it’s me.”
And he picked up. “I’m here,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve just been getting a gazillion calls from the media about Tito.”
“They’re making a big deal out of it?”
“Big doesn’t begin to describe it. Brokaw’s people called me for a quote.”
“How’s your jaw?”
“Actually, it feels very similar to that molar implant I had done last year. The only difference is that was administered by a board-certified oral surgeon.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better I just met some huge fans of yours.”
“Oh, yeah, who?”
“The Acars, Nuri and Nema.” Total silence from his end. “She said you’re just about her best customer.”
“Well, sure,” Mitch said slowly. “I fill up my truck there all the time.”
“You are so busted, boyfriend.”
“Busted,” he confessed guiltily. “I throw myself on your mercy, Des. You must be so disappointed in me.”
“No, baby, I’m not,” she said, easing up off of the gas pedal. Because he could be so much worse. He could be Brandon. “You’re my boy. All I want is you, no matter what size you are-large, extra-large, jumbo, economy…”
“Okay, you made your point, Master Sergeant. I’ll tell you one thing-I’m going to get Nema for this.”
“Cut her a little slack. She’s had herself a bad day.” Des told him what had happened to their window.
“Oh my God, that’s awful. Truly detestable. You wouldn’t think.. .”
“You wouldn’t think what?”
“Nothing. I was just about to say ‘You wouldn’t think something like this could happen here,’ but I stopped myself because any time something bad happens in a small town the bystanders always say ‘This is more the kind of thing you’d expect to happen in New York City.’ And, as a New Yorker, I always get hopping mad. Things like this go on everywhere, because there are total assholes everywhere. Will you catch who did it?”
“That’s up to Hate Crimes, but if I had to guess I’d say yeah.”
“They’re a smart crew?”
“They are, plus the people who go in for these types of crimes tend to be genuinely stupid. Real, I think Nema knew more about it than she was letting on.”
“Why would she hold out on you?”
“Because her husband told her to.”
“You don’t like him, do you? You think he’s oleaginous.”
“Damn, is it that obvious?”
“Only to me, girlfriend.” From the first day they met Mitch been able to read her mind. Des had never understood how. “I’m glad you called-I was just going to call you and tell you to press your white flannels.”
“You just said what?”
“We’ve been invited to the highly exclusive Dorset Beach Club for dinner tonight, lovey,” he said, putting on his best Locust Valley Lockjaw. Which was not good at all. It traveled by way of Canarsie, where his parents were from. “Esme told Dodge what happened be
tween Tito and me. Dodge thought if he got all of us together for a cookout and a swim it would help chill things out.”
“And Tito’s down with this?”
“Esme said she’d get him there. Dodge is inviting the rest of the Mesmers so as to defuse any possible tension.”
“The Mesmers?”
“That’s the name of our walking club.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“They don’t know it either. I’m bringing corn. Will and Donna are bringing everything else. You like them, right?”
She did like Donna. Will was polite but a bit reserved. Some of the locals were like that. Hell, most of the locals were like that.
“Jeff will be there, too.”
Jeff Wachtell she could live without. Des thought he was a whiner, plus he walked like a duck. “I thought you didn’t like to socialize with movie people.”
“That’s absolutely true. But under the circumstances I think this is something I need to do. Tito and Esme are going to be around for a while. I don’t want to get into a fight with this guy every time I try to go to the store.”
Which was why Des had wanted to march the actor straight to Westbrook in handcuffs. But she held her tongue. They’d been over this already.
“So are you game? I was kidding about the white flannels-it’s casual.”
“Thanks, baby, but I don’t think I’m up for that tonight.”
“You’re still mad that I didn’t press charges against him, is that it?”
“No, no. It’s not about you. I need to draw tonight, that’s all.”
“It’ll happen, Des,” he said encouragingly. “You just have to be patient.”
“Damn it, doughboy, don’t you ever get tired of being so supportive?”
He didn’t respond. Just gave her back a big dose of stung silence.
Now she sat there cursing her bad self. When she was frustrated she could go bitch cakes and then some. All the more reason she should be alone tonight. “That’s exactly what Professor Weiss told me,” she acknowledged. “He said I’d get it, and that the process would make me stronger. But it’s just not happening.”
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