“This was my father?”
“You tell me.”
He put his face up close to the photo. “You tell me.”
“Sure, you look a lot like Rico Tripoli,” I said. “But I’ve trusted my eyes in the past and things couldn’t have turned out worse.”
“How so?”
“It got my ex-wife murdered.”
I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. So you’re gonna have to do better than looking like that photo.”
“I understand.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.
“I was adopted.”
“I figured you might say that.”
He growled, “Look, Mr. Prager, are you going to let me do this or what?”
That response, like his laughing at his own joke, should have been proof enough. It was so fucking Rico.
I m sorry. Go on.
“I was adopted and raised in Vermont by…”
When he said Vermont again, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I recalled that Brian Doyle had mentioned a female PI from Vermont calling him several weeks back and asking about Larry Mac, Rico Tripoli, and me. Because of that I only half listened to the rest of what Paul Stern had to say about how his parents never pretended that he was theirs. About how they were well-to-do, but never spoiled him. About how his adoptive parents had done everything they could to support him when, a year ago, he decided to track down his birth parents. About how his mother had been a waitress up at a hotel in the Catskills. About how an NYPD fraternal organization used to sponsor annual golf and ski weekends at that same hotel. How he had the documentation to prove all of it if I needed further convincing.
“You hired an investigator!” I blurted out. “You hired a private investigator named Mary Lambert, didn’t you?”
“What? Yes… no. What I mean to say is that yes, I hired a private investigator to come down here and look into my biological parents’ pasts, but no, her name’s not Mary Lambert.”
“Fifty years old, but looks forty-ish. Blue eyes. Black hair with some gray in it. Just this side of beautiful with high cheekbones, plush lips, and a perfect nose. Not too much makeup, but classy. Okay, she may not have used the name Mary Lambert, but that’s her, right?”
“I don’t see the point in this.”
“But I do. And if you want me to talk about Rico, I suggest you-”
“Yes, that’s her. You seem upset and I don’t understand,” he said.
“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“In my place, given the things in the public record about my biological father, wouldn’t you have hired someone to check into them?”
“Probably.”
“Then I really don’t understand why you’re upset.”
“You don’t have to understand. Look, Paul, you seem like a good guy, but I’m not in much of a talking mood tonight. I’ve had a rough few weeks.”
“I heard,” he said. “I’ve been following the story. It’s terrible, but at least you found out what happened to that poor little girl. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“In the scheme of things, it’s very little.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” I asked.
He seemed confused. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Yeah, and I’m a Jew, not much of one by most standards, but still, it’s not my holiday. Since I’ve been single again, I do a traditional Jewish Christmas: Chinese food and a movie.”
He laughed, that charming smile returning to his face. “At home we did a variation on the theme. For us it was usually Indian or Thai and a movie.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“You want to see my bar mitzvah certificate and my adoption papers?”
“Your father-I mean, Rico-is probably spinning in his grave, but laughing too. He used to call me a heathen fucking Jew all the time and that was when he was being nice.”
“You were close. That’s what I heard.”
“Rico broke my heart. Only someone very close can do that to you.”
He bowed his head. “I know our talking will dredge up bad things, but-”
“Don’t sweat it, kid. Be here at eight tomorrow night and for god-sake, don’t bring wine. We’ll figure something out.”
He shook my hand, but couldn’t look me in the eye. “Thank you, Mr. Prager.”
“Moe.”
“Thank you, Moe.”
“One thing before you leave,” I said. “I have to know why you came to me?”
“Because of all the people left from his world, it seems you knew Rico Tripoli better than anyone.”
“Sometimes I think I didn’t know him at all.”
“Then that makes two of us.”
For a long time after Paul Stern left, I stood staring out my front window at the ambient streetlight dancing on the water of Sheepshead Bay. The kid was going to bring papers with him to prove who he was, but it would be a waste of time. He was Rico’s kid. I knew it from the second I saw him and once my brain filtered the New England out of his voice, it dawned on me that he even sounded a lot like Rico. If I was the type of person who believed in prayer, I would have said one right then and there. Paul Stern seemed like a good man, and I would have prayed for him to avoid the demons that had eaten his father alive.
THIRTY
Between the shock of Rico Tripoli’s newfound son showing up at my doorstep and the trauma over the realization that Mary Lambert had played me for a love-hungry dope, I had forgotten the dream I tried so hard to remember. Then, when I finally got back to sleep, it came to me again, but only in fragments and shards. In it, I was a dreamer once removed, like I was watching someone else’s dream and taking notes. There were flashes of John Tierney’s house and the altar room. This time the candles were lit and the panties were on the altar, but somehow the dreamer knew her bones weren’t there. The dreamer kept staring from the collage on the wall to the other photos on the altar, but then we were on the staircase to the bedroom. Black tear stains marked the faces of the saints, their moist, blackened eyes reflecting candlelight. The dreamer turned. I turned. The altar was there below us. On the wall, only a solitary photo of Sashi Bluntstone, eyes shut, her arms and legs bound behind her, her face almost beatific in death. Then nothing.
I called Sarah and for the first time in as long as I could remember, she sounded really pleased to hear from me.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, kiddo. Where are you?”
“The office.”
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Pets get into all sorts of mischief at the holidays. Think about it: big trees, loose pine needles, lit candles, tiny glass bulbs, chocolate everywhere. Besides, Dad, when did Christmas Eve matter to you?”
“In a way it does. I think about Katy. When your mom and I were first married, I wanted to get a tree, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Converts are the worst.”
“Yeah, she was pretty strict about that stuff.”
“She was a better Jew than I ever was.”
“That’s not what Grandpa Izzy used to say.”
“You remember Mr. Roth? You were so young when he died.”
“I was almost ten. He told me you were a good Jew because you did good for people.”
“Then it was good he died when he did, before he could see the mess I made of things.”
“It wasn’t all your mess, Dad.”
“Thanks, kiddo.”
“You doing the usual tonight?”
I hesitated before answering. I wasn’t sure I wanted to try and explain Paul Stern to her. Shit, I wasn’t sure I could explain him to me.
“Yeah, the usual,” is what I said.
“Are you going to the memorial for Sashi? Max and Candy want you there. They want to thank you.”
“I’m coming, but I-”
“Hold on a second.” Sarah covered the mouthpiece. “Dad, I’ve g
ot to go. I’ve got a beagle in here named Olivia who decided to eat a pound of chocolate Hanukah gelt.”
Go.”
“Love you, Dad. Bye.”
Hearing her say those words, the way she said them, so naturally, so unencumbered by the last seven years, made me think the guilt was worth bearing. They say there’s nothing like the love of a child. True. What I’d found out was that there was also nothing quite like the loss of that love. And hearing her mention Mr. Roth brought him back to me. Israel Roth, the father I had chosen. And me, the son he had chosen. I thought again about how pleased Mr. Roth would have been to know his real son had finally found his way in the world and that his son and I had been together when we scattered his ashes on the grounds of Auschwitz. Auschwitz, a hell Mr. Roth had survived, but a place from which he had never been fully liberated.
I went online and started researching the best Chinese, Thai, and Indian restaurants in the New York area. As I did, thoughts of Sarah, of Israel Roth, of Carmella’s son, who was named for Mr. Roth, of Paul Stern, and of Sashi Bluntstone swirled around in my head. The dream flashed back to me and was out of my head as quickly as it came. Then I found myself laughing at the thought of a beagle feasting on a pound of chocolate. My reverie was interrupted by the phone.
“Yeah.”
“Happy Holidays.” It was Detective McKenna.
“Merry Christmas.”
“How you doing?”
“Feeling pretty guilty, but it’s not all bad, I guess. My kid’s talking to me again.”
“That’s good.”
“Not for nothing, McKenna, but why the call?”
“Well, I heard about the reward.”
“I just bet you did,” I said. “I guess I have you to thank for that.”
“You deserved it even if you don’t think so.”
“Christmas is tomorrow, so we won’t argue about it. Why the call?”
“You were in terrible shape the last time I saw you and I was worried.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay. I’ve dealt with this shit before.”
“You going to the memorial?”
“You’re the second person to ask me that today. Yeah, I’m going, but I’ll keep my distance from the hostess. She’s a real piece of work.”
“That’s a kind way to put it. Just so you know, we’re calling off the search and wrapping stuff up.”
“Can I look at the evidence?” I heard myself say.
“What? I thought you said you were-”
“I am okay. I swear. It’s not that. Look, I talked to Tierney’s shrink.”
“Ogologlu?”
“Him, yeah. It helped me deal with the guilt. I just want to see if there was something I missed, something I should have seen. That’s all. I’ve started dreaming about Tierney’s house, for chrissakes.”
“I guess it’s okay. This case got to me too. Come around the day after Christmas. I’ll meet you in my office, but it stops after that.”
“Deal.”
“Sure. That’s what you said the last time. Merry Christmas.”
He hung up and managed not to apologize for wishing me Merry Christmas. Things were looking up.
THIRTY-ONE
Paul Stern showed up at eight sharp with a bottle of scotch, but it wasn’t any kind of scotch I’d ever seen.
“You’ve heard of single malt scotch, right, Moe?”
“Don’t be a wiseass, kid. I’m sure your PI told you how I earn a living.”
“Sorry. Yeah, she told me you own wine stores.”
“Well, we’ve been known to sell a bottle or three of Glenfiddich, Laphroaig, and Macallan.”
“This is single barrel scotch. A friend of mine belongs to a club that buys single barrels of fine unblended scotch and the club members get equal shares. Sometimes they have the barrel shipped over here and they have a party. Sometimes, like with this one, they have it bottled.”
“Just when you thought the idle rich had run out of ideas on how to waste money…”
“You resent money?”
“No. Just what people do with it,” I said, getting two rocks glasses from the shelf. “It’s just that when you grow up without money, you have a different kind of respect for it. That’s all. Your dad-shit! I mean Rico. He understood. He grew up like me.”
“It’s okay. You can call him my dad. I know who you mean and it will stop you from correcting yourself every thirty seconds.”
“Fair enough.”
“My friend gave the scotch to me as a gift a few years ago and I’ve never found the right occasion to drink it. I brought it down to New York with me because I hoped you’d talk to me about my biological father.”
“Call him Rico or we’ll be tripping over each other all night,” I said, pouring a finger’s worth of the honey-colored scotch in each glass. “So you think this is the right occasion, huh? You know some of the stuff I’m gonna tell you about your dad isn’t apt to make you very proud to be carrying around his DNA.”
“That’s okay, Moe. I’m a lawyer and did a little research on my own before I hired… before I had someone else look into things. I know all the stuff about his trial and prison time. I know he sold information and protection to drug dealers, so I get that he was no saint.”
“Another lawyer, just what the world needed.” I winked at him. “Listen, kid, if that was the worst of it… Maybe we better drink some of this.”
We raised glasses, neither of us making a toast, and sipped. I could taste the difference immediately. It was like the purity of a single sustained note coming out of John Coltrane’s sax. Of course, even a single note is a thousand different things. Maybe it was the same note a million other sax players might have hit, but it was just slightly different when he played it. But that was the thing about the scotch, as unique as it was, it was still scotch and inevitably disappointing. Single sustained notes played even by a genius aren’t that much different. It was like the first time I smoked a real Cuban cigar. It was great and sorely disappointing all at the same time.
“Good stuff, Paul. Thanks.”
“Tastes like scotch,” he said.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I want you to tell me the truth about Rico, and not like you told me the truth about the scotch.”
“Okay, sure.” I recapped the scotch and broke out some red wine.
It was ten o’clock by the time we noticed we hadn’t eaten. And by then I’d gotten past the hard stories about how Rico sold me out, how he was on a drug dealer’s pad even when we were first on the job, and how he let me walk into an ambush once at an old Mafia Don’s house in Mill Basin. I knew the PI had told him some of these stories, but he wanted to hear them from my mouth. I guess I understood that. We had since moved on to the funny stories, like the one about how Rico walked off post on the Fourth of July to sleep with a nurse in the back of a city ambulance and how the sergeant caught him with his pants around his ankles.
“Your dad and women… man, he was like a magnet. Women loved him and he looked so cool in his uniform. I remember those weekends up in the Catskills. Rico and I used to go sometimes. It was wall- to-wall drinking and fucking around.”
“I’m living proof of that,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to be insensitive, sorry. What about your birth mother?”
“Her name was Alice Weathers. She died about five years ago, but I talked to her sister. She said Alice fell in love with Rico that weekend, that he was the most gentle lover she ever had, but knew he barely even remembered her when he woke the next morning. When she had me, she wrote that the father was unknown on the birth certificate.”
“Then how-”
“Her sister. She told her sister Rico’s name.”
“Amazing. So, you wanna go eat, kid?”
“Sure.”
Just as we opened the lobby door, Sarah came strolling into the building carrying a tiny, fake Christmas tree in one hand and a bag full of gift-wrapped boxes in the other.
; “Hey, Dad.” She kissed me on the cheek. “I thought you’d be out at the movies. I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did. I thought you were working.”
“I got off at eight. I think we have something to celebrate this year and figured now that Mom’s not around, we could have a tree.”
“How’s the beagle?”
“She gives a whole new meaning to sick as a dog, but she’ll live.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Paul Stern, I’d like you to meet my daughter Sarah.”
He made to shake her hand and gave up. “Why don’t you come to dinner with us?” he said.
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Don’t be silly, kiddo. C’mon with us. I’ve been talking about my past all night and I think I might want to let Paul do some talking for a change.”
“I’ve got the keys, just let me drop this stuff off upstairs. You guys wait for me.”
Paul Stern grabbed the bag. “Let me help.”
I waited downstairs in contemplation of the smile on my daughter’s face and letting go of the emptiness that had haunted me for the last seven years.
THIRTY-TWO
The day after Christmas I met Jimmy Palumbo for breakfast at a diner on Sunrise Highway. He told me he’d spent the holiday with family and that it was an okay time. He barely ate his eggs, mostly pushing them around his plate. Nor was he in a particularly talkative mood. I could tell there was something on his mind and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what it was. I didn’t imagine the stultifying life at the museum was the future he had envisioned for himself when he was pancaking linebackers in the NFL. But now that the extracurricular work I had for him had dried up, the museum was all he had ahead of him. At least, Jimmy said, he didn’t have to go back to work until the second week in January. I considered offering him something at one of our stores, then thought better of it. It would have been a lateral move: trading in one life-draining job for another.
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