Yo watched her meal arrive—a turkey burger with all the trimmings—and got busy spreading mayo and mustard and adding lettuce and tomato to build a very respectable looking sandwich. I busied myself in like manner, building my hundred percent beef burger which was six more ounces of meat than Yo’s paltry poultry thing. I was hungry enough and filled with enough anticipation of the first bite that Yolanda’s aura was ineffective. Almost. I took the first bite, chewed, and waited.
Yolanda frowned at her sandwich. “People who lie about small things, Phil, will lie about large things,” she said to her burger, then picked it up and took a serious bite.
We both chewed, me masticating her words as well as my food. She was right, of course, only it didn’t seem like such a big deal to me. Most people would, if they could, claim a closeness to a powerful figure. Just like Carmine Aiello claimed to work for John Gotti and to be the cousin of Danny Aiello. Everybody knew Carmine was lying and nobody took him any more— or less— seriously for it. And maybe that was the difference: everybody knew Carmine was full of shit. And everybody believed Itchy really was related to a renowned figure of the underworld, even if it was the Black Harlem underworld of half a century ago. Hollywood had made a movie about the guy starring Lawrence Fishburne, legitimizing Bumpy Johnson for posterity, and, by extension, Itchy.
Question was, did I care? Did that mean everything the old dude had told me about Dr. Jill Mason was a lie? Yo read my mind. As usual.
“The stuff about Jill Mason is all on the money, who her parents and grandparents were and where they were from. And maybe Itchy told only one lie in his life. And maybe it was even a good lie. But I don’t think so, Phil. Nobody tells just one lie.”
There was nothing stupid about what Yolanda had just said but the stupid commercial jingled like loose change in my memory. “Betcha can’t eat just one.” Shit. “You going home?” I asked, “or to Brooklyn?” Yolanda’s long time lover, Sandra Gillespie, lived in the Fort Green section of Brooklyn. A former dancer with the Alvin Ailey Company, Sandra now taught dance to awkward little girls in awe of her celebrity, and to professional dancers looking to keep their edge, also in awe of her celebrity. She and Yolanda spent every night together but refused to live together, which puzzled me. But since I’d been told on more than one occasion that it was none of my business, I left it alone.
Instead of answering, however, she said, “You might want to pay a visit to the Schomburg Library. It’s up in Harlem, on 134th Street. Anything that happened involving Blacks, it’s on a piece of paper or film in that Library.” Then she added, “And I’m going to Brooklyn. Walk with me to the subway.”
I stifled my protest. That also was none of my business that she chose to ride the damn subway at all times of the night. But we both knew what it drag it was trying to get a taxi across the river to Brooklyn, and she knew better than I, she being a darker shade of brown. Taxi drivers, most of them some shade of brown themselves, had a bad attitude about driving Black people to Brooklyn at night. Yolanda had an even worse attitude about being treated like shit, so she kept her money in her pocket and her temper in check and rode the train. I walked her to the station and down the stairs and, satisfied that there were enough people on the platform to generate a feeling of safety, I kissed her goodbye and braced myself for the long walk home. The solitude would do me good, give me time to think. I could also work off the second order of fries and the chocolate cake. I was full and feeling mellow—the feeling enhanced by the smell of wood smoke in the air. People had their fireplaces going tonight. Then the wind did its sandwich thing. That’s what I call it when frigid, razor-sharp winds whip simultaneously off the East River and the Hudson River and meet somewhere in the middle of the lower part of Manhattan, sandwiching helpless, hapless pedestrians in the middle.
“Shit!” The exclamation was involuntary. I may as well have been naked for all the good my clothes were doing. I stepped into the street and hailed a taxi. I could think just as effectively riding home, and sitting in front of my own fireplace. And wondering why Yo thought I should pay a visit to the Schomburg Library. I wished I’d asked her.
CHAPTER THREE
I was at Jill Mason’s office the next morning before she was. That was intentional. I wanted to observe her arrival and I wanted to see if anyone else was observing her arrival. But if anybody was, I couldn’t tell. It was too cold to do anything but shake and shiver. I was bundled and hunched inside my coat and hat and scarves and praying that the good doctor would arrive on time. According to the plaque, she opened for business at 8:15. I was counting on her arriving half an hour before that. She did.
I saw her from a block away and knew immediately who she was, even though the wind was in my face making my eyes water. The wind was behind her, and because she was so tiny, she was propelled forward by the force of it. Even from a distance it was clear that she was a lovely woman. That was the appropriate word to describe women who looked like Jill Mason. Pretty was too trite, and beautiful didn’t contain enough of the unspoken elements.
Jill Mason also looked rich. Not the flashy, tacky rich of the mob or drug dealers or musicians or others who just got rich and want the world to know they have bunches of money. Jill Mason looked rich as if it were as natural a part of her as having brown skin the color of dark Godiva chocolate. But I knew that Jill Mason had been born around the corner from me and that thought made me stand straighter, stretching to my full five feet, eleven inches. I knew I didn’t look rich, but it suddenly was necessary for me to look...dignified. She certainly did. Her fur coat and hat were worth many thousands of dollars, but it was clear that she wore them because it was cold, not to make a statement of any kind.
She walked briskly, aided by the wind, head up, eyes forward and hands swing gently at her side, a purse in the right one and a brief case in the left. When she got closer I could see apprehension in her eyes, and that made me angry. This woman shouldn’t have to live in fear. No woman should have to live in fear, and certainly no little girl should have to live in fear. “Dr. Mason,” I said as she approached, and immediately regretted it. She jumped and backed up, fear widening her eyes. Even terrified she was lovely. No wonder they said people always fell in love with their shrinks. I was in love with Jill Mason and she wasn’t my shrink.
We spoke simultaneously. “I’m sorry,” I was saying, as she was asking, “What do you want?” I answered quickly, telling her my name and why I was there. She smiled slightly at the mention of Carmine’s name and reached her hand out toward the padlock on the gate. I realized that she’d had her keys in her hand all along, in readiness. I nodded an internal approval.
“Can I give you a hand?” I asked, and allowed her brief but thorough scrutiny.
She gave me the key and stood aside while I opened the lock and pulled the gates apart, re-locking the heavy, expensive lock and approving of it. She pointed to the key that opened the wooden-looking steel door to the office, and once again I nodded an internal approval and wondered how in the hell anybody had ever broken into this place. Now I stepped aside, let her enter, and then followed, closing the door, which I heard click and lock. She quickly turned on lights and looked around. It was barely noticeable but I noticed that she released the breath she’d been holding. This woman really was afraid.
I followed her through the well-appointed waiting room—nicer, I knew, than any other doctor’s waiting room in this part of town: some kind of Persian or Oriental rug covered the floor and who cared if it was fake, though I suspected that it wasn’t. It had a deep, royal blue background and lots of claret and gold in it and it was very pretty. Half a dozen arm chairs, upholstered in the claret and gold of the rug, were spaced throughout the room, and a beige upholstered sofa was on the wall opposite the receptionist’s window. There were tables throughout the room, and on them magazines, little vases of flowers, and little bowls of peppermints.
I made my hands into fists and clenched my teeth tightly together. “This is a bea
utiful room” I said, pushing the words through my teeth. What I didn’t say was that I’d kill before I’d let anyone hurt this woman. Just walking into her office probably cured a lot of problems for a lot of people.
“Thank you,” she said, hanging her coat on a hanger and hanging it on a wooden wall-mounted rack in her office. She placed her hat, scarf and gloves neatly on top of the rack and turned to face me. “I thought you were just part of Mr. Aiello’s bombast.” She gestured to a Mission chair and an African print sofa. “Please have a seat. Wherever you’re comfortable. Mr. Rodriquez is it?”
Her voice was low and mellow and I definitely was in love. I removed my overcoat, grateful that I’d added a suede sport jacket to my black wool turtle neck and black wool slacks, grateful that I hadn’t made today a jeans and sweatshirt day. Jill Mason was the kind of woman you wanted to look nice for, though I honestly don’t think it would have mattered to her what I wore. She gracefully exchanged her fur-lined boots for a pair of black flats that went quite nicely with her black knit pants suit and white silk blouse. The entire ensemble was some designer’s idea of what a woman of class would wear to a job without intimidating those whose paychecks were smaller by several zeroes.
She lowered herself, tenderly, I thought, into a Mission-style rocking chair, the mate to the chair I was in, and faced me. Her hair was copper-colored and it was shoulder length and framed her face like parentheses. Her jewelry was gold: flat clip-on earrings, a Rolex watch on the left arm, a cuff bracelet on the right, and simple gold band on her left hand the only ring. I knew from Yolanda’s report that Jill Mason was forty-two years old and had, little more than a year ago, buried her husband and two children, both girls. She looked sad and tired and fearful. But she did not look beat up.
“I confess that Carmine had to convince me, Dr. Mason. What usually comes out of Carmine we don’t call ‘bombast’ though it also begins with a ‘b.’” I allowed a moment for her smile, then, “He told me you’d been beat up.”
She sighed and closed her eyes briefly. “More of a roughing up than a beating. Pushing, shoving, threatening. I was— am— frightened.” She was about to say more when a tiny chime-like sound stopped her. “My receptionist,” she said, excusing herself and going into the outer room. I stood when she left and kept standing so that I could explore her office.
It was as comfortable as the waiting room, but in a different style: a well-done blend of modern and Mission. Lots of natural wood and bold, African colors and patterns on the walls and sofa cushions. The Berber rug was warm and neutral and made all the furniture feel right at home. Except for the doctor’s desk, which was at an angle in the far corner of the room, out of sight and out of mind. Unless, like me, one were looking for it, and I was. Here was the phone on which Carmine had heard the back end of a threat. Here was the desk he said had been trashed. All was in order, now. Scrupulously so. I leaned over and around in one of my contortionist positions and studied the photographs in simple gold frames, knowing who I would see: Dr. Mason and her husband and their children. They looked happy. Their smiles included their eyes, not just their mouths. Dr. Jill Mason’s smile no longer reached her eyes, I thought, as I resumed my place in the Mission chair. Just in time.
“I apologize,” she began. I cut her off.
“The need for apology belongs to me, Dr. Mason. I’m the one who’s here unannounced and without an appointment, which I’m sure you do have in a matter of moments. So may I schedule one? So that we can talk—”
Her turn to cut me off. “Do you really think you’re necessary, Mr. Rodriquez?” she asked, then blushed at the recognition of how I could interpret that question if I were a thinner skinned individual. “I mean do you really think...isn’t Mr. Aiello overreacting just a bit?” She frowned a little, as if in thought, trying, it seemed, to answer that for herself.
I shook my head gently and leaned forward in the chair toward her. I wanted her to take me seriously. And to be comfortable with me. “It’s true that Carmine is an excitable fellow, but there was no huff and puff, no bombast in him when he talked to me about you. He was genuinely concerned. For you and for his daughter.”
“For his daughter?” she said quickly, and fear invaded her eyes.
“For what would happen to his daughter without you to do whatever you’re doing for her. Which, if I’m reading Carmine correctly, weighs in on the miracle scale at the loaves and fishes or walking on water level.” I offered what I hoped was an assuring smile and wondered what about Carmine’s daughter had frightened her.
She lowered her eyes and was silent for a long moment. “Can you return this evening, Mr. Rodriquez, after my last patient? Allowing time for me to dictate my notes, say 8:15?”
“I’ll be here,” I said, standing and reaching for my coat. “Would it be OK if I brought you some dinner?” She began a protest but I kept talking. “How do you feel about Southern Bar Be Que? Ribs and chicken?”
“From that place on 10th Avenue? It’s owned by a woman from some where down South?” she asked with the first hint of animation I’d seen in her.
“North Carolina,” I said, one hand on the doorknob. “And I’ll bet you’d rather drink white wine with your meal than beer.” I didn’t make it a question and she didn’t bother to answer it.
“Thank you, Mr. Rodriquez. I’ll see you later.”
I was thinking too hard about why somebody like Jill Mason should be in the kind of trouble that buys ass-whippings by the time I left to think about being cold, though I was walking double-time out of habit. I made my morning stops as usual and almost on time. I mentioned to Willie One Eye that I’d met his nephew and he nodded, without comment. I received a come-hither wink from Mrs. Campos, apparently forgiven for being sought by Carmine, and pretended to blush in shame. Itchy seemed a little distant, but I was too preoccupied to focus on it too much. Besides, Itchy was a moody guy; he’d been known not to speak to me at all on occasion. Yolanda, however, could have been the sunrise over San Juan Viejo. Only two things made her that happy: Sandra and money.
“What happen, Sandra win the lottery?”
“Almost that good,” she said with even better humor. “She won a grant to officially open a dance school! No more teaching in church basements and union halls and following her students all over town, from one rented studio to another. Everybody will come to her, now.”
“And who’s more excited, you or Sandra?”
She pretended to ponder the question as she opened her carrot juice and poured it into a glass. “I’m pretty psyched, but she’s over the moon!”
“Tell her I said break a leg.”
“Tell her yourself. She’ll be here at 7:30.”
“But I won’t. I’ll be picking up dinner for me and Dr. Mason,” I said, and filled her in on my morning, being surprised again at the level of Yolanda’s interest in this case. She sat on the edge of her chair, literally, listening to every word, asking questions, clarifying details. Her interest was intense until I announced that, following my morning meetings at NYU, I planned to spend the afternoon uptown in Jill Mason’s old neighborhood.
“What do you hope to find poking around on the Upper East Side?”
“The woman lived up there for more than twenty years, more than half her life.” I couldn’t help the hint of exasperation in my voice. Surely that much should be obvious, even to Yolanda. But she was shaking her head at me in that way.
“I’m telling you, Baby Boy, that whatever is after Dr. Mason is right here in the ‘hood. Any trouble looking to find her uptown would have found her uptown, long before she moved back downtown.”
I hated it when she called me Baby Boy even more than when she shook her head at me. That was something she started when we were in college when I’d behave in a way that she called “spoiled little macho boy.” If I’m honest, I’d have to admit that lots of Latin men— and Black men and Italian men and Greek men for all I know— exhibit similar behavior. It’s the grown up version of the pout
boys do when they don’t get their way with or from some woman of importance: grandmother, mother, sister, lover. Since Yo was, in a way, all those things for me, I would get really injured when she wouldn’t give in to something I was demanding. She’d called me a baby boy at one of those times, and it stuck. To justify its adherence, I took my coffee to my desk and began re-reading last night’s report on Jill Mason.
“Are we billing Bert Calle?” she asked, still full of her good humor and pointedly ignoring my pique.
Bert was the father of the little girl whose beaten and raped body was found on the roof of her apartment building over on Avenue A. Jesus! Was that just yesterday? I shook my head. “I’m sorry I forgot to talk to you about that.”
“No problem. I didn’t think so. Damn shame,” she said and shook her head. “How’re you supposed to make a kid feel safe in the world when they’re not even safe in their own homes?”
That stirred something in my memory I’d wanted to ask her opinion about. “What do you think is wrong with Carmine’s kid?”
She shrugged. “Carmine.”
I laughed, finished my coffee, and picked up the phone. I’d left word in a few places last night that I’d be looking to talk to a couple of my cop buddies this morning, guys I’d walked the beat with and who had access to the people who really know what’s what on the Upper East Side: the doormen and porters and bellhops and maids and nannies. The invisible people. People like mi abuelitos, both of whom had been doormen in ritzy Upper West Side buildings for more years than I am old and who knew more about the residents of those buildings than the snobs ever could imagine.
It was arranged that I would talk to the day-shift doorman and a porter in Jill Mason’s former residence, and to a porter in her former office building. Two ‘Ricans and a Black man, proof of our changing times. Back when my grandfathers were looking for work, Colored men were barred from opening the doors for and tipping their hats to the denizens of ritzy hotel and office and apartment and department store buildings on the Upper East Side, so they worked on the West side, which made getting to work a pain in ass because they had to cross the park. I shook off the bad memory, stood, grabbed my coat and pulled it on, all the while muttering curses to myself which apparently were louder than I’d intended because Yo sauntered toward me from behind the screen.
Two Graves Dug Page 4