by Marge Piercy
“They live like animals. If they took decent care of their children, no harm would come to them.”
She chuckled theatrically. “I’d love to see how fast you’d get yourself organized, wakened by a raging fire in the dead of the night. If you’re lucky. Smoke inhalation gets most people, as it did Torte.… Who do you think the other body was? You must know.”
“What do you care about that old gossip? I did half the work fixing that house up, before you grabbed it. Still living on my tab.”
“Gee, Ross, I don’t remember sitting around getting high all those years. I thought I was having babies, raising our children, cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, and working for real live green money. Guess I remember it wrong.… But living there I can’t help wondering whose body that was.”
“If you think you have ghosts, why don’t you ask them?”
“So you and Tony are still partners?” Try another approach.
“I’m surprised at Cesaro. Never expected him to be sentimental about family.” He studied her narrowly. “But he’s causing me some small trouble at the moment, which I imagine you put him up to. Tony and I are not partners. You know my partners—Carl and Roger.”
Both of them were glaring not really at each other but something the other symbolized. “Ross, remember the fairy tales I used to read the girls—”
“Terrifying and irrational. Sadistic. I objected but you—”
“Sometimes the ogre has an external soul. He’s destroyed by capturing and killing that soul. But you made me be your external conscience, and you thought you’d be safer and more comfortable, if I could be destroyed.”
“You’ve always liked to moralize daily life.” He imitated a high-pitched voice. “Ross, the grass is dying, we must water it. Everything’s a melodrama with you.”
“For years I thought one value we had in common was to try to live a decent moral life, doing as little harm as possible. Living carefully.”
“Damn it, Daria, talking sense with you is a waste of time. You’re just not in touch with reality. Everything is a fairy tale to you. I deal all day with land values, with urban blight, with mortgages, with profit and loss and lending rates, with variances and financing. You deal all day with chocolate mousse. If you never lifted another finger, who the hell would care? If men such as myself were stymied, the city would decay from within. Boston would rot into one huge festering slum filled with rats and welfare mothers breeding like hamsters.”
She was sitting tucked in against the wall, imagining the little twin wheels turning in her purse. She would have liked to peek in to check that her little player was recording, but she did not want to risk calling his attention to it. She hoped her roses were surviving waiting for her to move them, but so long as Ross was giving vent to his compulsion to explain, to justify, to try to drag agreement or approval or absolution from her, she would sit and record. “You feel that you’re improving neighborhoods, so it’s all right to use fire as an eviction device. Especially since the condo law means you can’t evict people fast enough.”
“I haven’t said anything like that.” He turned from her sulkily, running his finger along the grime-covered countertop. “You have fire on the brain. I’m trying to talk about the larger picture—but you’ve never been able to grasp that. You simply couldn’t grow with me. You couldn’t or you just wouldn’t.”
“Grow in what way?” She scuffled her feet and shut off the recorder. This part wasn’t going to be any use. “Wasn’t I always available to you? Didn’t I put your dinner parties first—”
“I have a caterer to do that now,” he said with morose satisfaction.
“When did I ever plead I was too busy to spend time with you as you did constantly with me?”
“I was busy! I’m trying to achieve something. It’s a highly competitive field fraught with economic and sociological vectors that can make or break a project.”
“So is cookbook writing, actually,” she said with a giggle.
“Everyone created such a fuss, as if yours were any sort of real work. Taking something that every woman does as a matter of course and making a fetish of it. People begging your autograph. People fawning over you at parties. It brought out silliness in those I thought had better sense, like that fool Carl going on about the hands of genius. How long can anybody listen to that nonsense?”
She decided to turn the recorder on again. Her patience was running out. “Did you really think because you’d gotten miffed about the amount of attention people paid me and because your girlfriend was eager to marry, that you had a right to try to burn me alive?”
“If you’d moved when I asked you, instead of being stubborn, you wouldn’t have been here at all.”
“And you feel the same way about your tenants. Bobbie’s parents wouldn’t leave the third floor apartment—”
“You only moved there to annoy me. Let’s see you run it into the ground. Let’s see how you like being responsible for property. I’m not accountable to you any longer for what I do.”
“Then why, Ross, are you having this conversation?”
His thin mouth opened and then shut. He said slowly, “You have to understand how hopeless it was.”
“Why? Why should I understand?”
“You’re blaming me for events that would never have occurred if you’d trusted me instead of running to that little mick shyster.”
“She turned out to be a pretty good lawyer, didn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He spoke sharply. “In her position, with you for a client, I could have cleaned up. But I never handle divorces. It’s a sordid business.”
She found herself fighting a smile of amusement. Sordid? “What do you mean, with me for a client?”
“You know how to appear helpless and fluffy. When I met you, you acted innocent enough. But it’s all a fake now.”
“We each see the other as having changed into somebody else, having become a strange person with altered values, different needs—”
“Exactly. And you couldn’t grow with me. Now you see.”
“I couldn’t shrink with you is the way I see it. You’re a moral pygmy, Ross.”
“Hold onto your insults and sit on your fat fanny. Within three years, five on the outside, I’m going to be one of the most respected real estate investors and developers in this area. People will be courting me to sit on boards and lend luster to projects. I’d love to have you around to witness my progress, but you’ll probably be mugged by one of those petty criminals you’ve grown fond of.”
“Which of us has been thicker with petty criminals is up for debate. Or wouldn’t you describe your torch as petty?”
“Your mind is petty. I’m clear financially, even if you managed to scalp me. At least I don’t have to see this place again after today.” He began to pace, glaring about.
“Why are you here, anyhow?”
“The contractor was supposed to meet me an hour ago. We’re going over the salvage. Then I’m quit of it all.”
“Ross, you were quit of it all the day you walked out. You just didn’t want me to have the house.”
He looked at her with a downward twist of his mouth. “Why should you have it? All that money, all that work down the drain. Down your maw. Everything to make you cozy!”
“I like to enjoy where I live and I’m beginning to again. I do think you’re quite right that we belong apart.”
He halted as if astonished. “You admit it! You admit I was right.”
“You did unforgivable things, deceiving me, lying. And I’ll never forgive you what you did to Torte and to this house and to Mariela—and to me.”
“Who in hell is Mariela?”
“Think of her as another Bobbie.” She realized suddenly that whenever she brooded on Bobbie’s death she saw not that little boy, whom she had never met, but a more boyish Mariela lying dead.
“What flagrant sentimentality. If that kid had lived, what do you think he’d have grown up to be? On
e more junkie.”
“When did you start thinking that you count more than other people? That because society pays you more than a taxi driver, you can use everybody up in your schemes?” She heard the recorder click off. The cassette was full.
“You’re the same softheaded liberal you were when I had to marry—”
“Going to throw that at Gail, for the next twenty years? This is where I came in.” She stood, dusting the seat of her pants. “Look around you. You made a mess. You’re making one still.”
“You’re the mess in your old pants and carrying a load of dirt from one place to another and calling it your mother.”
She walked out the open door. “For you, there’ll be plenty of ashes. I’ll stick to food and soil, and you persist with your cash and your ashes.”
He stood in the doorway calling after her, “You can’t see it even yet. You couldn’t move up with me. You’re happy with people like those troublemakers and bums. Daria, you won’t let go of Eastie.”
“Happy?” She nodded at him over the first bucket of rosebush as she heaved it up and staggered toward the van. “Absolutely. No, I’ve never let go of what I loved, while it had some good in it. But I sure am letting go of you. You may find out that the fires you order can burn your fingers too, by and by. So long, Ross.”
29
Bloomberg was short, stocky, not at all fat but solidly built. His black hair was a mass of tight curls and he was boyishly handsome, with a little cleft in his chin and big brown eyes with lashes as long as Daria’s. Being short and boyish in face, he scowled a great deal and affected a deep booming voice. From telephone contact Daria had built up a picture of him as bigger than Tom and about fifty, which she had trouble reconciling with the cute little satyr before her.
Lou’s recording was gold and the case against Petris coming along fine.
“Mrs. Walker, I appreciate what you tried to do.” Bloomberg twinkled at her. “Basically he fails to deny rather than admitting anything. As a confession, it’s less use in court than to us privately. In essence, I suspect a jury would feel he admitted to having your house burned, but we’re far more interested in pinning that kid’s death on Walker. In that matter, he was too cagey to say anything we can sink our teeth into.”
Tom said, “But he practically confesses to burning the Lexington house.”
“Sure,” Bloomberg roared, starting to light a cigarette and then glaring at Tom. He had agreed to refrain from smoking for the length of their morning meeting, but he clearly viewed it as extreme martyrdom and seemed angrier at Tom than at any arsonist. “But I’m not going after him on that. Truth is, you burn the house you live in for insurance, and half the time a jury thinks, why not? It’s your house. It’s hard to get them to convict, and I’m not wasting time with it. But the fire where the child was killed, that’s mom and apple pie. We can bring that one in easy, if we can prove it. That’s where we have to move against Walker. Murder in the commission of a felony. Conspiracy. On that a jury will convict.”
“How about getting Petris to testify against the others?” Mac suggested. He seemed fascinated by Bloomberg, not even glancing at anybody else.
“I’d find that distasteful. We have to bargain with Ledoux, and that’s smarmy enough. Petris is a big fish. I want the Kingsleys and I want Petris and I want Porfirio and I want Walker.” Bloomberg fingered his Marlboros, glaring at Tom.
She had a moment of feeling bleakly detached from everyone else in the room. Walker, Porfirio, those were her names, her people.
“How about wiring Lou again?” Mac suggested. She noticed he had discarded his flannel shirt for the visit to the AG’s office, replacing it with a button-down oxford cloth shirt and a rep tie.
“That’s scheduled for his meeting with Porfirio tomorrow, but frankly his credibility won’t persist ad infinitum. If he keeps delaying, we have the distinct possibility of one or all reaching the decision that Ledoux has lost his nerve. Then they’ll simply hire somebody else and we’ll have lost them.”
Everybody sat glumly viewing the papers on Bloomberg’s desk. “Maybe somebody we know could pretend to be a torch looking for work?” Fay suggested. Her hair was as usual freshly done and she had put on her best somewhat tight orange dress.
Mac snorted. “They wouldn’t bite. It’s like walking up to some respectable businessman and saying, Hey, any rival you want burglarized?”
“Actually they don’t think it’s the same, because prosecution for arson is so rare,” Bloomberg said gloomily. “But that would be entrapment. Well, let’s call in the rest of the Baker Street Irregulars. Now that we’ve picked up Jay Jay, I thought we’d just run everybody through their paces and see how it all hangs together. Ledoux and Jay Jay haven’t seen each other. Dorsey,” he said to his assistant, “bring in the folks. Ledoux is in 1020A and the kids are in 1014 and Lou’s little helper in 1026. Get Ledoux first.”
Lou ambled in nodding at everybody and greeting all by name, at his ease, with a smile for everybody. “Now, didn’t I do right this time?”
Mac spoke first. “Lou, you did a terrific job for us. Couldn’t have been better performed.”
“And tomorrow you’re meeting with Porfirio,” Bloomberg boomed.
“You want me to wear that funny harness again? Christ, Mr. Bloomberg, listen to me. Tony’s Italian. I’ll end up in the Bay.”
“My brother has no connection with the Mafia,” Daria said crisply. “If he did, he wouldn’t have to hire you to burn his buildings.”
“Your other brother Cesaro, your older brother—” Bloomberg began.
“Cesaro isn’t older, he just seems that way.”
“He’s proving most cooperative. He’s reopened the case on your new dwelling. He’s working with us.”
“It’s nice to know someone in my family will be out of jail when this is over,” she said sourly.
Dorsey brought in Orlando, Sylvia, and the kid who had helped Lou in his recent burnings, Jay Jay, a school dropout now twenty. He was a skinny, gentle-looking kid with a slight limp or twist to his walk. He looked frightened, Daria was not surprised to notice. After Tom had surprised Lou and Jay Jay on the roof, Jay Jay had disappeared for a month. He had been picked up almost as soon as he came home.
Glancing at Lou, Jay Jay pouted. Then his eyes fixed dilated on Sylvia. Lou was staring at her too. Daria couldn’t understand what about Sylvia upset them. Sylvia had that tough girl street veneer, but nothing about that should so rivet the attention of the two men. Bloomberg noticed too, his cleft chin jutting as if he smelled something. Sylvia was nervous today. This last hour was the first time she and Orlando had been in the same room since Orlando had dumped her when her pregnancy was confirmed. Daria wondered what they had been saying to each other when Bloomberg had closeted them both in a conference room together until he wanted them brought to his office. Sylvia was paying little attention to Lou or to Jay Jay. She kept her gaze fixed on Orlando and had not noticed how the others were observing her with what looked like fear.
Still glaring at Sylvia Lou burst out, “Now look here. I been playing a straight game with you guys. Don’t try to pin that old mess on me.”
Sylvia glared back, not understanding, Daria was sure, any better than she herself did what Lou was talking about. Mac started to speak but Bloomberg drowned him out, waving for everybody to shut up. “Well, Lou, it’s up to you to explain it to us then. Let’s everybody keep their mouths shut and let’s hear Lou’s side. Let’s all listen with an open mind to everything he says.”
“My side? I had nothing to do with it. Jay Jay can tell you. Those bastards weren’t paying but two hundred then. Walker gave Eddie a shitty two hundred. Eddie came to me and I told him what to do, but what do you expect from a kid doesn’t know his ass from his useful parts?”
“Eddie? You mean Eduardo?” Sylvia burst out. “Where’s my brother? Did you get him in some kind of trouble?”
Daria jumped up and put her arms around Sylvia, trying to keep
her from saying more.
“Listen, my wife can tell you, that night was our fifteenth anniversary. I took her to Anthony’s Pier Four. I dropped such a wad, I bet they remember me yet. Eddie came to me and said he was doing a job for Walker, and he knew I could tell him how. I told him okay, but he fucked up. That wasn’t my fault. Ask Jay Jay!” Lou turned a glance of desperate appeal on the boy.
Sylvia pulled free of Daria. “Eduardo! Where is he? You know where he went!”
Bloomberg nodded to Dorsey. “Better take Miss Rodriguez out. I’m afraid we’ve all figured out where Eduardo is.” When Sylvia, weeping and kicking, had been removed, he boomed on, “We’ll get an exhumation order. Probably some way to identify him. Dental work? We better find out what dentist he went to.”
Orlando, who had stood up and then sat down, stood again. “You’re saying that Eduardo was the stiff in Daria’s house, I mean before she moved in?”
“I think we can safely assume that. Right, Jaime?”
“Call me Jay Jay.”
“Okay, Jay Jay. Orlando, you think you can get his family to figure out how to identify him?”
“Sylvia’s mother’s going to have a heart attack. She’s been thinking he must be in trouble with the police or have somebody real tough after him. See, he just disappeared. No letter, not even a postcard, nothing. It really got to Sylvia.”
“But you’ll talk to them for us?”
Orlando swallowed. He had been avoiding Sylvia and her family. If he talked to them, there was only one thing he could say, to start with. “It’s going to kill her mother. Eduardo’s the only boy she has.”
Tom grinned. “But you can be like a son to them.”
Bloomberg was shifting impatiently, patting his cigarettes. “Are you going to talk to them? Or are you scared? I don’t want to send anybody official around the neighborhood yet.”
“Why should I be?” Orlando squared his shoulders. “I’ll talk to them.”
Daria was not sure that Tom should have put that extra pressure on, but perhaps it was better for the kids to marry in spite of being too young than for Sylvia to have the baby alone. Perhaps Orlando simply wanted to be pushed. The pose of macho nonchalance he had assumed had left him no way back from the boys he hung with to Sylvia.