Secrets and Fries at the Starlight Diner

by Helen Cox

  ‘Coming,’ Esther called as she and Rivera moved towards the door. Esther looked through the peephole, then at Rivera. ‘He seems to be alone.’

  ‘Unlock the door and open it quick, all at once,’ Rivera instructed in a voice so low it was almost under her breath.

  As instructed, Esther began turning the latch on the door.

  Rivera, using both hands, raised her gun at the doorway.

  A split second later Esther whipped the door open to reveal Jimmy standing alone – except for Louie, who barked at Rivera over and over.

  Rivera slowly lowered her gun.

  ‘What the hell are you pointing a gun at me for?’ Jimmy asked, raising the hand that was free of Louie’s leash in the air.

  ‘This apartment was under fire just over an hour ago, it didn’t seem sensible to answer the door unprepared,’ Rivera said with a dry note in her voice.

  ‘Never mind that, where’s Bonnie?’ Jimmy asked, unhooking Louie’s leash so he could scamper into the apartment.

  ‘Jimmy, I’m here,’ I called as he manoeuvred past the two women guarding the door. As soon as he set eyes on me, his pace quickened. Rushing towards me, he put a hand on each of my arms and stared at me. Did he want to hold me? Or did I just want to be held by him? I couldn’t tell which it was, I only wished the space between us could vanish.

  ‘You OK? You didn’t get hit? Are you hurt?’ He gripped my arms tighter with each question.

  ‘I was scared, but I’m alright now,’ I said.

  ‘You sure?’ His eyes were wide and intense.

  ‘Yeah, thanks to Jack,’ I said, and at this Jimmy turned to look at the actor. His eyes immediately settling on his bandaged arm. ‘Jesus, did you get hit?’

  ‘It’s just a scrape,’ Jack said. ‘It all could’ve been a lot worse.’

  Jimmy slowly let go of me. He looked at Jack’s arm, then at the smashed window and then back at me.

  ‘They’re getting desperate. They must know I’ve got something on them. Damn it.’ Jimmy walked a few paces and pushed a hand through the front of his hair. ‘I should’ve seen this coming. But I didn’t know they’d go to these lengths. I didn’t…’ Jimmy trailed off and looked back at me. I noticed him swallow hard before he turned to look Jack right in the eye and said, ‘Thank you, for saving her. For looking after my client.’

  A smile appeared behind Jack’s beard. ‘You’re welcome. I just did what anyone would.’

  ‘Look, technically speaking, I’m just here to investigate who fired these shots,’ Rivera said, breaking into their moment. ‘But there’s clearly a connection between this and the murder charge you’re up for and so that is now part of my investigation.’

  Jimmy swung round to face the detective and stared at her. ‘You’re going to help us, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not on anybody’s side, Mr Boyle,’ said Rivera. ‘I’m just going to do what I always do – and get to the truth. If I happen to uncover anything that helps your case, I guess we can chalk that up as a fortunate byproduct.’

  Jimmy offered Rivera a small smile, but then turned his attention back to Jack. ‘Look… I know we have a history, but I really need to win this case, and if you testify about what happened here tonight at Bonnie’s trial it will help me do that. Help the jury see that there’s something bigger going on here. I’m not sure how tonight fits into the bigger puzzle but it’s an important piece. I know it. But we’d need you to testify.’

  Jack was silent. Staring at Jimmy without one clue on his face as to what he was thinking.

  ‘Please,’ Jimmy said. ‘Don’t punish Bonnie because of what you think of me.’

  Jack looked from Jimmy to me and back again. ‘To be clear: I don’t like what you did to Esther, and I don’t like what you did to me, but I think you’re doing the right thing here and, if I can, I want to help.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jimmy said. A sigh of relief slipped from his lips.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Jack. ‘But do you really think my testimony will help?’

  ‘I do. If nothing else, people are obsessed with the idea of fame, and having you on our side won’t hurt.’

  ‘I think a certain Lucy Carter will be particularly pleased to see Jack,’ I said, shooting him a smirk.

  ‘The prosecution?’ Jimmy asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  ‘Yeah, she definitely reacted when Jack’s name was mentioned before. I think she might be a fan,’ I said, wondering if Carter wouldn’t mind trading places with me if she got to be locked up in an apartment with Jack Faber every night.

  ‘Well, that can’t hurt us,’ Jimmy said.

  Suddenly, a low grunting noise came from just behind where we were standing. We all turned to see Esther scratching Louie’s back and the dog, gripped in sudden ecstasy, lolling over on one side, whining while his paws flailed in the air.

  ‘Hey, what’re you doin’ there?’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Nothing, I just started stroking him,’ Esther replied.

  ‘That is a shameless display, Louie,’ Jimmy said to the dog. Though Louie couldn’t have known what Jimmy had said to him, he looked up at his master with guilty, helpless eyes. Esther kept stroking him, smiling and seemingly getting some comfort from the animal’s affections. She looked up at Jimmy from her crouching position on the floor. ‘He’s a really sweet dog. So friendly but…’

  ‘What?’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Well, I sort of had you down as a cat person.’

  ‘That may be the cruellest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ Jimmy said with half a smile on his lips. Esther struggled with herself, as she always did whenever she had to produce a smile, but her lips did eventually point in an upward direction.

  ‘So, what do we do now?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, if they’ve tried once they might try again,’ Jimmy said, walking over to the shattered window. ‘I wouldn’t replace this with glass. Between now and the trial it needs boarding up. And you’re not to be alone here and you’re definitely not to answer the door to anyone,’ he said, shutting the drapes.

  ‘Alright,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think there’s any way we could get police protection at least for some of the time between now and the trial?’ Jimmy asked Rivera.

  ‘I can look into it for you. Even if we can’t spare someone all the time, we could maybe come to some kind of arrangement.’

  ‘What about Alan?’ Esther asked.

  ‘Yeah, that could be a good idea,’ Jimmy said, while goosebumps dimpled my arms. I couldn’t say anything in front of the others – they all trusted Alan and would dismiss my suspicions outright – but if Jimmy wasn’t feeding information to Frankie, and I hoped with all my heart that he wasn’t, then Alan was the next most likely suspect.

  ‘Alan who?’ Rivera asked.

  ‘Montgomery. Works in the 34th and his wife works with Bonnie at the Starlight Diner on East Houston,’ Jimmy replied.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Rivera, nodding.

  I looked at Jimmy’s face and wondered. No matter what I felt for this guy, could I trust him? And if I couldn’t trust him, could I trust anyone?

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was just gone midnight at the Starlight Diner. Lucia had left to catch the subway a few minutes previously. After the shooting, she’d been reluctant to leave me alone, even for the few minutes it would take me to finish closing, but Jack was due to arrive in about a half hour to walk me back to the apartment, so I assured her I’d be fine. All I needed to do was mop the floor and then I could lock up and go home myself. Dragging the water bucket from the kitchen into the diner, I started cleaning the red and white lino which, according to Mona, was the same lino Bernie had laid down in sixty-four when he opened the joint. Our job before leaving the diner each night was to make it look like it hadn’t been laid a few months after JFK’s funeral.

  I can’t have been mopping for more than a couple of minutes when I heard it.

  Thud. Thud.

  Somethi
ng smacking on the glass door of the diner.

  Slowly, I turned to see a dark figure standing just beyond the glass. I jumped and stumbled back a few paces, knocking the mop bucket and sloshing the water about. It wasn’t Jack. He used Esther’s key to the diner when he picked me up. Who the hell was out there?

  Four days had passed since someone had tried to kill me. Detective Rivera had found rubber pellets in the street outside the apartment. She believed the shooter had used them to draw me to the window that night. But all that told her was that the hit had been made by a professional. It gave her no clues as to who that might have been. And now a stranger was standing outside. Gone midnight on a Friday, alone.

  I stood rigid on the spot.

  The door was locked. Whoever it was couldn’t gain access without a struggle.

  Thud. Thud.

  The dark figure knocked again and then did a little friendly wave.

  That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting to happen next.

  I took a few steps closer to the door and only then could I make out that it was Nick. He shook a brown paper bag at me and smiled. I put both hands to my chest in relief and sighed. Walking over to unbolt the door, I shook my head at him.

  ‘You scared the life out of me, you jerk.’

  ‘Sorry.’ His smile immediately dissolved. ‘It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise, not a nasty shock. I maybe didn’t think that part through too well.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I sighed, but managed to follow it up with a smile. ‘It’s been a pretty weird week.’

  ‘Oh, well if this isn’t a good time, I don’t have to bother you. I just… I had this little romantic surprise planned for you.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, looking at the brown bag and then back at Nick’s perfect smile. A romantic surprise would be a welcome distraction right now. Besides, with less than a week until the trial it might be the last romantic surprise I got for a very long time.

  ‘Yeah,’ Nick said. ‘I happened to pass by on my way home from work and saw you in here. I know you said we’d wait a few weeks but I just couldn’t help myself. You’re a woman of mystery who, for some reason, can’t go on dates right now. I understand that, but I thought I’d bring a casual version of a date to you.’

  ‘Aw, that’s really cute,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s only Chinese food from the place across the street, and a couple of sodas, but I figured we have quite a nice setting here, if you’re not too tired?’

  Too tired? Was this guy kidding? Did he think people made romantic gestures like this for me all the time? That I had the luxury of picking and choosing between them?

  ‘Well, technically it is past my bedtime,’ I teased, thinking about the curfew the court had insisted on. When I was working at the diner late, I had till one in the morning to be back in Jack’s apartment. Sort of like Cinderella, but not quite. Jack would be here to pick me up in a little while anyway. But thirty minutes of romance was better than nothing. ‘But maybe I’ll let you be a bad influence on me just this once, and just for a little while.’

  A grin spread over Nick’s lips as he stepped through the doorway. I locked the door and shunted the handle back and forth to check it was secure. After what had happened, I couldn’t count on all midnight visitors being handsome guys with Chinese food and roguish smiles.

  Not a second later, the diner darkened. I gasped and turned to see Nick standing over by the light switches. The only lights he’d left on were the little spotlights that ran above the counter. My heart quickened at the sudden change in mood but Nick wasn’t finished. He sauntered over to the jukebox and a few moments later the opening beats to ‘You Send Me’ by Sam Cooke floated out.

  ‘You like this record?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Yeah, it’s an expert choice. You done this before?’

  He grinned. ‘Hardly. Not a lot of time for romancing women in my line of work,’ he said, tapping more keys on the Wurlitzer and selecting a few other songs. He sauntered back over to the counter and started emptying the brown bags. The smell of noodles and sweet-and-sour sauce filtered up from the foil packets and I at once realised how hungry I was for something you couldn’t buy in a diner.

  ‘Would the lady care to take a seat and be served for a change?’ Nick pointed at one of the booths. Smiling, I went over and slid across the red leather as he laid out the packets and forks and sodas.

  ‘Thanks. This is… this is really sweet of you,’ I said, gazing up into his blue-grey eyes. He stared back at me and then sat on the opposite side of the booth.

  ‘Well, I haven’t had a lot of time spare over the last few weeks but, I’ll be honest with you, the time I have had spare, I’ve spent quite a lot of it thinking about you.’

  I smiled, wishing I could’ve said something similar and been honest about it. It’s not that I hadn’t spent any time thinking about Nick – he’d appeared to me once or twice in the rare moments I actually had some privacy – but I’d had too much else on my mind to be daydreaming about boys. So much to deal with. So much that Nick didn’t even know about, and maybe it wasn’t fair to keep him out of the loop any longer. If he had been thinking about me as much as he said he had, he could be building this whole false ideal up about someone who could find herself in prison at the end of the month.

  ‘You alright? You not hungry?’ Nick asked, noticing I’d gone quiet and had yet to touch my food.

  ‘Yeah, I’m alright. There’s just a lot going on for me right now and I feel kinda bad I haven’t let you in on any of it.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know each other that well. I wouldn’t push for you to open up to me any sooner than you want to.’

  ‘I want to but I’m afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That if I tell you the truth you won’t like me anymore,’ I said, pushing some noodles around with my fork and staring at the scrambled mess in front of me.

  ‘You think I serve this glorious feast to every waitress I meet?’ He grinned and then pushed a forkful of meat and a few stray noodles into his mouth.

  I laughed. ‘Well, I hope not.’

  ‘There you have it. Proof I like you a hell of a lot. Whatever it is you’ve been holding back the last few weeks, it’s probably safe to tell me.’

  ‘Well… What I have to say is pretty outlandish.’

  ‘I’d expect nothing less of a woman with blue hair,’ Nick chuckled. ‘In fact, I’d be pretty disappointed if it wasn’t a little bit outlandish.’

  ‘Alright, well how’s this for starters?’ I paused and took a deep breath. Once I said this there was no taking it back. ‘Part of the reason I jumped so hard when you were at the door is I got shot at earlier this week.’

  ‘What?’ Nick dropped his cutlery and reached his hands over to mine. ‘Oh my God, are you alright?’

  ‘Physically, yes, but as you might have guessed I’m a little shaken.’

  ‘What happened?’ Nick squeezed my hand a bit tighter.

  ‘It’s really complicated but the CliffsNotes version is that I witnessed a murder right before Christmas. And the guy who committed the murder is real powerful and…’

  ‘And this guy shot at you?’

  ‘No. I mean, I really doubt it was him – I don’t think he’d risk coming to New York in person to shoot at me – but I think he hired someone. To make sure the case didn’t go to trial.’

  ‘So the police know? The police know you witnessed the murder?’ Nick’s eyes searched mine for answers.

  ‘Yeah, they do, but they know about it because I’ve been charged with it.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘I’ve been charged with the murder that I witnessed. I’ve been under house arrest for the past three weeks until the trial date.’

  Nick’s hands, still gripping mine, slackened and retreated back to his side of the table. ‘God. Well, I guess that explains why you haven’t been able to come on any dates with me.’ He swallowed hard and was giving me a sideways look I didn’
t much care for.

  ‘I didn’t commit the murder,’ I said, though why I felt I had to explain myself I don’t know. I’d just confided in this guy – the least he could do was hold off on his judgment of me. If I was guilty, would I even have told him?

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t think that,’ he said, but his eyes lowered to the table.

  ‘You don’t believe me do you?’

  Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet mine. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. You seem like a lovely woman. It’s just… sometimes people aren’t quite what they seem.’

  ‘I didn’t have to be so honest with you, you know,’ I said, unable to fight off the scowl setting in on my face.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just a big thing to plant on somebody without warning, you know?’

  ‘I get that.’ I nodded, though I still think he could’ve shown a little more sensitivity.

  ‘When’s the trial?’ he asked.

  ‘I leave for Atlantic City in six days, trial’s in seven.’

  ‘And… what’ll happen if you’re found guilty?’

  ‘Well, I certainly won’t be coming on another date with you anytime soon.’ I tried to joke but all the light had left Nick’s steely eyes and a thick awkwardness was growing between us.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to need a bit of time to adjust to this. To what you’ve told me.’ He frowned. ‘You’ve been honest with me when you had no need to, but I need to be honest with you. I didn’t realise you were mixed up in anything like this. I like you a whole lot, that hasn’t changed, but maybe I should keep my distance. Until after the trial, at least. Seems like I’ll only be an added complication right now anyway, when you’ve got all this mess to deal with.’

  ‘Alright. I get it.’

  ‘Look, you should finish this food. It’d be a shame to waste it,’ he said, standing.

  ‘Oh, alright,’ I said. ‘You wanna go now?’

  ‘I think it’s for the best, don’t you?’

  I walked him over to the door. He planted a gentle kiss on my cheek.

  ‘This isn’t the end, Bonnie, not if you don’t want it to be. Just give me a bit of time, alright?’