Or maybe McDowell would be outside the Aladdin Hotel, behind the wheel of a black Ford, nightstick at the ready, his ruddy face made redder by memories of the ass-blistering that Tommy the Cop gave him echoing above the radio blare.
Alfie Bascomb? Not yet, not again.
I went toward Seventh.
And I started south, moving more purposefully than the crawling crowd of wide-eyed yet cautious tourists around me, though without the scowl of a typical New Yorker caught behind a crawling crowd, some of whom had traveled 1,000 miles to stare up at a giant TV that was showing the same thing they could see at home. As I passed Father and Sons Shoes, I stopped short to avoid bashing into a stout, silver-haired woman with over-sized glasses who, for some inexplicable reason, had decided to open her handbag and withdraw her wallet. Then I noticed a young man on the island that separated Broadway and Seventh who had pulled down his video camera to focus in on the handbag lady. With all there is to shoot here in the new electronic circus, in Tokyo West—giant stock symbols swirling overhead and underfoot, reflected in murky puddles; billboards of perfect models, sullen in fresh underwear; familiar labels and slogans on rippling banners affixed to the faces of the towers and buildings, on moving billboards mounted on flatbed trucks; flashing, dazzling lights; manipulation—and he decides to videotape a woman—
She withdrew a snapshot, the kind they take at Sears, at elementary schools, and held it high for the camera.
“We’re thinking of you, Wendell,” she shouted. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
She held it high until the man on the island held up his thumb, turned the bill of his baseball cap to the front and started across Broadway, camera at his side.
She looked up at me as she tucked the photo back into her wallet.
“My grandson,” she smiled. She wore a red, white and blue ribbon on her green, fuzzy-collared coat.
“And him?” I asked, gesturing with my head toward the young man with the video camera and the NY Fire Department logo on his hat.
“The other one,” she said as she snapped the clasp of her bag.
The April sun had returned, but I lost its rays as I moved under a block-long construction scaffold in Chelsea.
I hadn’t worked it out yet. Bascomb resurfaced to visit an old friend. The first time, he waited near the friend’s theater, then came at me with a wrench to leave me splayed in a pool of blood that would’ve run to the stage door. The next time he told his friend I’d been hired to kill Sonia. In between, he called on Danny Villa, counselor to the disenfranchised, media star.
Resurfaced? No, he’d been running a junkyard in Queens. He probably advertised under his own name in Newsday.
And Bascomb had told Hassan it was Tommy Mango who hired me.
Actually, Hassan hadn’t specified which Mango. Maybe it was old man Ernie. Maybe he was the one who had resurfaced. Maybe Tommy didn’t know.
Yeah. Sure.
“I do not know the Mangionellas,” Hassan had said. “I never did.”
Had he confirmed that Sixto knew the old man? Or was he telling me Bascomb knew Tommy?
Jimmy knew Bascomb had come at me.
Christ. My head was spinning.
I needed paper, a pencil, a desk. I needed to work it out, to look it over, to ruminate.
Addison once said, “You’re best in a library, Terry. In front of a computer screen. Or playing ball, banging under the boards. But putting that together, young man, isn’t going to make you a cop.”
I told him he was wrong. A man can develop instincts, intuition.
Back at the Avellaneda, I didn’t even bother to look behind the curtain. Who was hiding there, crouched behind velvet on the wood-and-Styrofoam subway platform?
McDowell? He would’ve stumbled, kicked over the scenery.
Sixto? Like Leroux’s Erik the Opera Ghost, hiding in the dank sub-basement of a small theater, struggling—
No.
Other ghosts? Like who?
I closed the door behind me, and as I entered the kitchen, I heard voices from the living room.
I hesitated.
My daughter’s manuscript was back on the table. It hadn’t been there this morning when we’d left the house.
“Mr. Orr …” She doesn’t usually greet me. But she didn’t sound alarmed.
“I’ll be right there, Mrs. Maoli,” I shouted.
I hung my jacket on the back of Bella’s chair and went to grab a bottle of Badoit from the refrigerator. I took a drink as I passed through the brick alcove.
Mrs. Maoli was sitting on the sofa, facing me. Next to her was Dorotea Salgado, pink tissues in her hands as they rested in the lap of her black-and-burgundy dress. She had been crying and so had our housekeeper.
“Mrs. Salgado,” I said.
“She apologizes, Mr. Orr,” Mrs. Maoli replied quickly, as she dabbed at her own red nose with a man’s handkerchief. “She did not want to lie.”
“The newspaper,” Dorotea Salgado began, her accent a faint trace, “it said you help children. And Natalia said also.”
“She is ill, Mr. Orr.”
“You are?”
Mrs. Salgado nodded sadly, solemnly. As she bent her head to avert her eyes, I looked at Mrs. Maoli, who discreetly touched her temple, then slowly shook her head.
Looking up at me, Mrs. Salgado whispered, “I am sorry.”
“No, I understand,” I said, “but I couldn’t reach you.”
“Mr. Orr,” Mrs. Maoli said. “Her daughter …”
“Of course,” I replied. When I came across the body in the St. Mark’s Place apartment, Dorotea Salgado had found her Sonia. As I looked at her, I knew she would have preferred not to. “I’m very sorry.”
She had on black shoes as fashionable as her finances would allow. Mrs. Maoli wore her customary support hose and clogs.
“My Sonia …” She began to weep.
As Mrs. Salgado dabbed her brimming eyes with the tissues, I silently told Mrs. Maoli that I wanted to speak to her friend.
“I will make coffee, Dorotea,” she said, nodding to me as she pushed off the soft cushions.
As Mrs. Maoli left the living room, I crossed over to where she’d been seated.
Mrs. Salgado looked at me and absently tugged at the black scarf she had pinned to her dress with a brooch. I put the bottle of water on the coffee table, next to the rented Hamlet DVD.
“Mrs. Salgado,” I said, turning to her, “I wonder if you’re up to answering a few questions.”
“Natalia says you will find who killed my Sonia. Do you have ideas?”
“Well, I can tell you I believe now that your daughter did not kill Asher Glatzer.”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“And I believe whoever … Well, this has to do with what happened back then.”
“I am sure,” she said, nodding. She tucked the tissue under the buttons of her long sleeve.
“Tell me about the police. When did they notify you?”
“Tuesday,” she said. “At the showroom. When I saw them …” Remembering, she started to cry, but fought hard to hold it back. Tears welled, then tumbled onto her face. She ran her fingers along her cheek. “I saw her body. They took me to the medical examiner’s office.”
“Do you remember the name of the policeman who came to see you?”
“No,” she said, “but he was, what is the word?” She suddenly snapped her fingers. “I don’t know the word in English. Yes, compact. Strong, but he was not too tall.”
“Silver hair?”
“Yes.”
“Mangionella.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I believe so.”
Tommy the Cop goes to Union Square. “Did you mention me?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“Why not?”
“Oh,” she sighed, “I was not thinking. I only answered his questions.”
“Did you tell him you were looking for her?”
“No. Is it important?”
&n
bsp; “It’s probably best if we said the same thing. And I told him you hired me,” I said. “Did he ask you when was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Yes. Not for many years. I said this.”
“I imagine he asked you about enemies. …”
“Yes.”
“And I imagine you told him what you told me, that Sonia didn’t kill Asher Glatzer.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“It was not important to him.”
“He said that?”
“No,” she replied, “but I know. I saw.”
I took a sip of the sparkling water.
I said, “I guess I still don’t understand why you wanted to see her now.”
She let out a long breath. “What Natalia said is so,” she said finally, without explanation. “I am not well.”
“And you didn’t want to tell her while she was in Bedford Hills?”
She said, “I only know then for a few weeks. Maybe two months.”
“Mrs. Salgado …”
“I have the Alzheimer’s, Mr. Orr.”
“Oh.” I sat back. “I see.”
She paused, groping for words. “It is coming—”
“Yes, progressing,” I said. “Are you taking medication?”
“Yes,” she replied.
She reached into her purse and withdrew a small orange pill container. She handed it to me.
Tacrine, the label said. Four times a day, 10 milligrams.
“And you wanted to see her—”
“When we both could understand, yes,” she said, as she returned the container to her purse.
“To make peace.”
“It could be possible.” She stopped, closed her eyes tight. “It could have been possible.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “We could have helped each other.”
I nodded.
“And now I want to help her while I can.”
I kept quiet. The old woman had tried a different approach in the diner and she’d been lying. She might be telling the truth now, but I’d check out the Tacrine online. If it wasn’t indicated for early-stage Alzheimer’s, she’d have other questions to answer.
But I believed her now; or I was starting to. If she’d lied, she’d given me a lot of data to play with. I had her address from the pill jar—she lived up in Morningside Heights, about a six-mile subway ride to Union Square—and she knew I could get her work address from Mango.
“You met Mrs. Maoli,” I said. “A coincidence?”
“She became my friend. But yes. We talk about your daughter. In the market. I said to her about Sonia.”
“She told you I was a private investigator?”
“She said you would help.” She tilted her head. “But I have made trouble for you.”
“No.”
“Your eye …”
I said, “It happens.”
“And the police?”
“They know I wasn’t there,” I replied. “Until after.”
The rich scent of coffee wafted toward us. I heard Mrs. Maoli at work in the kitchen: the clatter of cups, saucers, spoons; the bustle of service. She’d had a busy morning: resurrecting Bella’s manuscript, cleaning up the modest disarray left by my daughter’s little clique. Even my copy of Arrowsmith was neatly in place and not on the floor, where it had fallen once again as I’d dozed off on the sofa the night before.
“Mrs. Salgado, does the name Luis Sixto mean anything to you?”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “He is the one who changed my Sonia. She was a good girl.”
“After Sonia was arrested, did you ever hear from him?”
“No.”
“Not once,” I led, “in any way? A letter, postcard …”
“It was not true,” she said, as she shook her head. “She was not his girlfriend. I know this. She was too young for that.”
“I understand.”
“But this Sixto was not good. I told Sonia.”
“What did she say?”
She held up her hands. “She had changed.”
“So she continued to see him …”
She nodded her reply. “But not in that way,” she added, defensively.
“Did she have other friends?”
“The one who was her true friend was the Arab boy.”
“Ahmed Hassan.”
“Yes. He was a funny boy. Very lively. He wanted to be an actor and my Sonia wanted to be an actress.”
“Did Hassan contact you after Sonia went to jail?”
“In the beginning, yes. I think he was different. He came to my house.”
I felt a twinge in my knee and rubbed it. Mrs. Salgado looked at my jeans, then turned her eyes back to me.
“You have hurt yourself?”
I shook my head. “Old injury.”
She pointed to my eye. “Old one, new one,” she said, smiling.
Mrs. Maoli was carefully pouring the espresso into small white cups.
“None for me,” I said as I entered the kitchen.
She removed a cup and saucer from the floral tray.
On the counter between the sink and the stove was a small box from a bakery on Bleecker, on the cusp between Little Italy and the West Village.
“You knew she was coming.” She nodded, but didn’t turn toward me. “How?”
She filled a second cup. “Because I ask her.”
“She called?”
“I find her,” she said curtly.
“You found her? Where?”
“At the cemetery. Yesterday.”
“The funeral. Right.”
Pulling aside the thin red-and-white string, she opened the box and removed bow-tie cookies dusted with powdered sugar.
“Mrs. Maoli …”
She didn’t reply and continued to place cookies on a small plate.
“Mrs. Maoli.”
She lifted the tray and turned.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
She made a face, pressing her lips together and inverting a smile, creating an expression that purported to show apathy, but instead said she was vaguely displeased.
I reached over and took the tray by the handles and slid it onto the kitchen table. Deep-brown coffee rippled in the tiny cups.
“You don’t like that I have to ask your friend those questions?” I suggested.
“You have to,” she said, shrugging.
“What is it?” I reached over and took a cookie.
“Your friend, the policeman. Mangionella.” Her voice dripped with scorn. “He calls you today. He says you know what it is about. I ask and he says you are helping him. To find out who killed Sonia.”
“And?”
“So you are not trying to help Dorotea.”
“Why isn’t it possible to help Mango and Dorotea?”
“You know,” she said. “You know.”
I could not be impatient with this small woman who stood before me, this surrogate grandmother to my daughter, this source of continuity, of tenderness, for our little family.
“You think he’s against Dorotea?”
“He is like the father: un ladro. A thief who helps no one, only himself.”
“A thief? What does he steal? What has he stolen?”
“He’s no good. Sporcato e corrotto. E piccolo.”
She was wrong. There’s nothing small about 600K in diamonds.
“And how do you know this?” I asked.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, waving her hand at me in dismissal. “Everyone knows this. Everyone in Little Italy. You forget,” she added, “I knew the mother.”
“Rosa.”
“Rosa. They made her sick. All of them.”
“Mrs. Maoli …”
“And you know this. That they are not good people. The men.”
“I’ve heard it said—”
“But the son is your friend,” she charged.
She’s at least a foot shorter than I am, but,
as resentment simmered to anger, she now controlled the room.
“He’s not my friend. He’s not not my friend. He’s a cop. He’s helped. I found the body and I called him. That’s it.”
“‘That’s it.’ But nobody can say who kills Sonia.”
“No,” I sighed, “not yet”
“I don’t know why you don’t call the good one. Addison.”
“He works uptown—”
“Him, you don’t like and he is your friend. He is thinking about your wife and—”
I was slowly shaking my head. “Basta, signora. Prego,” I said softly, my eyes closed. “Don’t mention her. Don’t mention—You can’t. Per favore, dire nient’altro.”
Knowing she had violated an unspoken trust, she stopped, and as the anger dropped from her plump face, she stepped back and looked away before slowly turning to me. “Io sono spiacente.”
“Io so,” I nodded, “Io so. You want to help your friend.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Orr,” she repeated. “I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“Forget it,” I said. “Go have coffee with Dorotea. It’s all right.”
She nodded and lifted the tray. The cookies shifted on the plate.
I stepped aside to let her pass.
“Mr. Orr.”
I turned to face her. Marina’s pale limestone cliffs were visible over her shoulder.
“Don’t forget to read the book of your daughter,” she said. “Gabriella, she worries.”
A moment later, I heard the clatter of small spoons stirring espresso.
TWELVE
I hailed a cab outside the video store after dropping off Bella’s Hamlet. “If you wouldn’t mind, Dad …”
A dance tonight at Walt Whitman; a rave, it’s called. A theme, even: “The Body Electric.” Not bad. “Hokey,” Bella says, frowning. A rave requires preparation, apparently: silver-and-purple glitter around the eyes. And a pre-event warmup: pounding, pulsing, throbbing music that had all the charm of the warning klaxons at a power plant. It started before dinner began. My protest drew a smirk, but we ate to Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor for two pianos.
Then the electronica boom tick-pulse, whir-whirl, click-click returned, grating from two rooms away.
“Good-bye,” I shouted. Dishes away; damp checkerboard towel on the faucet.
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