A Well-Known Secret

by Fusilli, Jim;

  She had her laptop hooked up to the TV speakers. Windows rattled, mortar chips between bricks fell to the floor. (Not really.)

  “Good-bye,” I screamed. I understood now why Eva Figueroa let them get ready here.

  Bella and little Glo-Bug bounded into the kitchen. My daughter looked like a teenager all set to attend Mardi Gras, Glo-Bug like a hood ornament. I glanced at their fingernails: purple, suddenly four inches long. Baby talons.

  Bella wore black Converse sneakers. High-tops.

  “You’re dressed right,” Bella said approvingly. “Finally.”

  I had on a black sweatshirt under my peacoat, the hood hanging in back over the collar, and thick gray cords.

  I had Leo’s .38 in the sweatshirt pouch.

  “Gloria, tell your Mom I said thanks, OK?” I said as I hooked the cell phone to my belt.

  Eva was chaperoning the rave. I’d be covered until midnight.

  “Why are you going to Queens?” Bella asked.

  The music was relentless. Somewhere, Robert Moog cringed.

  “I told you,” I said. “I’ve got to talk to a guy.”

  “In the auto graveyards.”

  “In the auto graveyards.”

  “I think,” she said, “you’re going to buy a car.”

  Glo-Bug nodded. Leo and Glo-Bug want me to buy a car. Bella does, too. I guess I don’t have a choice.

  “I’m not buying a car.”

  The scent of Mrs. Maoli’s chicken cacciatore, particularly splendid tonight, remained pungent, alluring.

  “If you do,” Bella pressed, “remember I’ll be driving in three years.”

  I smiled. “Have fun. Rave well,” I said as I went for the front door, Hamlet tucked under my arm.

  “You got gloves?”

  I tapped my coat pockets. “Gloves. Yes.”

  Now, as the cabbie slid his two right-side wheels around a death turn that took us to the Triborough Bridge, I ran my hands over the pockets again. Gloves.

  The night sky was a deep indigo, with a sprinkling of stars beyond thin, translucent clouds.

  “You don’t get many people go to Shea by taxi,” said Edwin Salida, cabbie. The meter was already at $18.50. $19.25. “Limos, maybe, for these fuckin’ guys, they pay $65 a ticket. Them.”

  We bumped hard over a swelling in the blacktop. My hatless head barely missed the dome light. My hair bristled.

  “Or the number seven, out of midtown,” the cabbie amended, as I settled back into the vinyl seat.

  Signs on the Grand Central Parkway warned of La Guardia up ahead. Cars started drifting right.

  “I was here last year. The first game after, you know? When Liza sang ‘New York, New York,’ Diana Ross, mi hombre Marc Anthony, and Piazza hit the home run,” Salida said.

  “I saw it on the news.” Bella was sitting on the hotel-room floor, working her new journal, clipping and pasting, cataloging with a new set of coloring pencils, and I was up on the bed, on my stomach, legs out, my chin and forearms on a small mound of pillows. When Mike Piazza hit the ball, the crowd at Shea let out a cheer unlike any I’ve ever heard. More than a cry of joy, it was a spontaneous burst of unbridled relief, a collective explosion in which something familiar and elemental triumphed over the sudden sense of uncertainty and fear that gripped New York. It was as if Piazza’s home run told the fans that everything could be all right again, that the old feelings, all the old things, would someday return and be all they were before.

  “Did you see that?” I said.

  Short on clothes, Bella was lounging in one of my wrinkled blue Oxfords. She started to cry, and I did too.

  After a minute, as the crowd continued to roar, I said, “When you were a baby, you would sit on my back when we watched TV.”

  “I’m too big,” she said as she sniffled.

  “We could hold hands. …”

  “Who they playing?” Salida, I noticed, had an unusually large head and the beginning of a bald spot, no bigger than a silver dollar now, but threatening to expand to monk-like dimensions before the decade closed.

  He repeated, “Who they playing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He shook his head. “You go to the game you don’t know who’s playing?”

  “I like a good surprise,” I told him.

  I got Salida to let me out on Northern Boulevard, past Shea, and with the bright lights that rimmed the stadium to my back, I walked east to 127th Street. The Yellow Pages on Yahoo! told me that AB Towing and Repair was at 1213 35th Avenue. Which could’ve been right near Shea, on Flushing Bay or way over at the edge of Rego Park. I thought I’d start out in the area close to the stadium, then circle back toward the water, where the harsh wind blew, and I’d do it with my head up. A rough place here: dark, grease-stained alleys walked by hard men who had to hustle to apply their skills, to compete with neighbors of circumstance who might be friends, to fight off wise guys who wanted to muscle in.

  Made uneven by the thick roots of trees and the abuse of heavy equipment, the sidewalk beneath the Northern Boulevard overpass jutted and sank, peaked and sagged. As I went by a car wash that had shut down for the night, my shoes crackling on the broken glass that had been shoved toward the gutter, a pink van bearing the legend FORDHAM BEAUTY SUPPLY drove by quickly, confidently, and turned right up ahead, as the road bent away from the underpass. Behind me, faint cries, a muffled roar. For now, the home team was doing all right.

  I went south on 127th toward 35th Avenue.

  Auto graveyard, I realized, wasn’t really an apt name for this part of the strip. While there were short stacks of flattened auto bodies, racks of mismatched doors, transmissions standing as sentries in orderly rows behind barbed fences and corrugated sheet metal, 34th Avenue was a long block buzzing with scores of services to bring cars back to life: signs advertised rebuilt engines, electrical systems, door regulators, steering columns, manyforts. (Manyforts? Manifolds, maybe.) Men in soiled unis not unlike the one Bascomb wore were still at work, pulling shattered windshields, carrying bulky batteries, hosing down the clumps of oily soil around mottled sidewalks in front of the shops.

  Logic dictated that AB Towing and Repair was still open and boss Bascomb would be on hand.

  I looked west as I shuffled in place to ward off the wind from Flushing Bay. At the far end of the street, orange sparks rose like fireflies from the flames at the bottom of a charred garbage can. Workers appeared, disappeared: Ignoring flickering stars, they moved with intent as they went back into the shops. A lean man in a brown hat with earflaps rolled a tire toward an open bay.

  I heard the roar of a jet plane and looked up to see its silver underbelly. It seemed no farther away than the end of the street, where old pallets burned. Its wheels were down, its landing gear ready for impact on a runway about two miles away.

  I kept moving on 127th, walking past a multicolored yet somehow gray tower of crushed bodies. As I reached the corner, the lively, cluttered work areas scarred only by the effects of heavy labor suddenly gave way to a place that felt abandoned, abused. To my right, once-small cracks in the blacktop were now vast, odd-shaped potholes and craters worthy of the moon.

  Bascomb’s street was as eerily lifeless as 34th had been bustling with industry. Garage doors were locked and cars were parked behind gates and graffiti-stained cinderblocks. Fluttering tubes in the streetlamps cast unreliable light on the shredded mudflaps, soiled pizza boxes and crashed aluminum cans on the battered sidewalk, its concrete so thoroughly chipped away that a fire hydrant seemed suspended above ground level. As I stared at the empty street, at the translucent halo cast by the stadium lights in the distance, I heard a low, rattling noise to my left: a rat scurrying along the cinderblocks, over broken glass, sniffing, its long, pink tail slinking behind it as it padded on small paws.

  Another plane thundered overhead. By the time I looked back down, the rat was lost in darkness.

  I started down 35th, passing a pile of old, treadless tires that
surrounded the corpse of a mid-’70s LeSabre, its front hood open, its brown body marked with handwritten yellow numbers, arrows and lines.

  Up ahead, light from a window. As I drew closer, I saw it was a storefront diner, competition for the Stadium Deli a block over. Chubby’s was its name, according to an old sign hung over its front door. It offered falafel, gyros, souvlaki. French fries. Tomatoes—Fresh! Hamburgers. Coke and Pepsi.

  I listened to the wind, the rush of cars on Northern Boulevard, the sudden whirr of a hand tool from over on 34th.

  Have to be the best souvlaki in Queens, in the five boroughs, from here to Athens, to make me come to this bombed-out hellhole of a block to eat.

  A little bell attempted to ring when I pushed open the front door, but instead it made a dull, tired ting. It let out the same dead sound when I let the door close.

  Chubby’s had four red seats, cracked vinyl on tarnished silver bases, at a counter that was more for storage than service: flattened cartons that once held generic brands of pita bread and juice were stacked on its top. To the rear, beyond the round seats, were more crushed cartons tied with hemp, and a cigarette vending machine; on the business side of the counter, a griddle, a well for deep-frying and, under the small TV, a dried stake of gyro meat kept warm by orange-red coils. Near a tower of take-out containers, three pots of coffee sat warming on silver rings: Chubby’s raison d’être at this time of night.

  On the TV, the Mets were playing the Phillies. The Mets pitcher looked as if his ears were frozen to the sides of his head. In the dugout they wore parkas and ski masks.

  Behind the glass counter that held boxes of Life Savers, gum and antacids, stood a tall, very thin black man who seemed to be approaching retirement age after a hard stretch. He had scar tissue above his eyes and a crude rip that ran from below his ear through the flecks of stubble toward his lips. He wore a soiled white apron over an oversized green-and-black flannel shirt that had a tear in its left sleeve. With his elbow on the cash register, his head cradled in the palm of his hand, he was either staring at the TV, planning to get back at the guy who sliced him years ago or reviewing what he’d done to end up stationed in the armpit of Queens behind an eye-level row of yellow mustard jars, ketchup bottles with crusted tops and a lifetime supply of cheap Louisiana hot sauce.

  I took in the diner’s scent and figured they changed the frying oil on Mondays. At least it was warm in here.

  “I guess you’re not Chubby,” I said as I opened my coat. The man didn’t move.

  The license on the face of the cash register gave the address of the place as 12-12 35th Avenue. Which meant Bascomb’s place should’ve been on the other side of the street.

  I shifted to look out the front window and I saw a black door next to a wide steel gate that had been pulled tight to the splintered sidewalk and was held shut by a thick padlock.

  “AB Towing over there?” I asked, pointing.

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Is that—”

  “I don’t know what you want,” he said tiredly. “But I ain’t got it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Man breaks in your window, your steering lock, busts up your bumper, your front end, it ain’t my business.” He still hadn’t looked at me. “I heard it before.”

  “I’ve got no complaints,” I told him. “I’m out here to talk.”

  “Yeah,” he scoffed.

  I didn’t reply. The man was right. I was out here to talk, but I also came for payback. I was going to kick Bascomb’s ass and I was going to like it.

  “Will he be back tonight?”

  “Man with a tow truck don’t need no office.”

  I said, “What, he just sits on the highway and waits for triple-A to call?”

  He blinked.

  “You mind if I hang here awhile?” I asked. “I’ll order something.”

  “No need,” he replied. “Go sit if you want.”

  I nursed a club soda for three innings. Bascomb didn’t show and the thin man who wasn’t Chubby stayed silent, mostly: Out at frigid Shea, one of the Phillies hitters took a hard, stingy fastball off his bare elbow. As he hopped and hollered in anguish, not-Chubby laughed.

  Outside, a few cars rolled by, going slow to slip around the craters. I turned to watch.

  “Forget it,” the man said.

  “Yeah?” The gyro meat on the stake hissed and spat.

  “He do his office in the morning, then he go.”

  “What time?”

  “Morning,” he repeated.

  I was about to ask him why he hadn’t told me about Bascomb’s office hours when I first came in, but I let it slide. He’d saved me the trouble of having to rent a car and have it break down on the Throgs Neck Bridge.

  I took another sip of the flat, salt-laced club soda and decided to stretch my legs. As I swung around, accompanied by a metallic squeak from the springs beneath the seat, I saw a car ease to a stop in front of Bascomb’s door.

  The driver stepped out of the black Ford and into the dull light, onto the splintered sidewalk, his heavy shoes crunching loose cement.

  McDowell, wearing a black stocking cap and, over a dark, long-sleeved sweatshirt, a navy-blue down vest.

  “Cop,” said the man behind the counter.

  McDowell went through white headlight beams past the front of the car as, from the passenger’s side, Jimmy Mango appeared. Mango watched as his brother’s errand boy tugged the dented knob on Bascomb’s black door.

  Mango had to try for himself, and he nudged aside the taller, redheaded cop. Steam rose from his mouth as he muttered.

  I watched through the thin frost on the diner’s window as Jimmy Mango skipped past McDowell and tried in vain to lift Bascomb’s locked gate.

  Mango stood in the rays of the headlights. He wore a purple V-neck sweater, a gray T-shirt, black jeans and sneakers. Though he’d been out of the car for less than 30 seconds, he began to shudder in the cold.

  McDowell said something that Mango discounted with a shake of the head and a condescending grimace. Mango gestured toward the door. Dutifully, McDowell went over and knocked, first rapping easily, then pounding with a flat palm.

  When McDowell stopped his banging, Mango gave him a hard glare and I watched as the young cop waited to be told what to do next.

  Jimmy Mango went back to the car. I could see him say “Fuck it,” with a quick, desultory wave. He pulled the car door hard and I heard it bang and echo along the alleyway.

  McDowell gave Bascomb’s damaged knob one last pull, then returned to the driver’s seat. He and Mango consulted briefly and then they ripped away, tires slipping on black mud. A moment later, the thin spiral of blue vapors they’d left behind wafted away.

  “That it?” the man asked.

  “More or less.”

  As I tossed a five-spot on the countertop, he answered my last question by telling me I could grab a cab at Shea. Livery drivers circled, he said, like carrion crows. He said that: like carrion crows.

  I was home before the game ended. Out of curiosity, I watched the top of the ninth and the Mets’ modest celebration near the pitcher’s mound. I cut the TV before they were back in the clubhouse.

  I called Julie and left a message on her machine at the D.A.’s.

  I picked up Arrowsmith, fumbled through a long passage and, knowing I was cheating the story of Martin’s frustrating plight with the Tozers, I put the book back on the coffee table.

  I dug through the cabinets above the sink, then decided against making myself a cup of hot tea.

  This house is empty when she’s not home.

  I thought this at 10:30 and again at 11:15.

  Nursery of Crime was still on the table where Mrs. Maoli had placed it, its pages perfectly aligned.

  I went back to my study and reviewed my notes in Word, with WNYC streaming through the tiny, tinny speakers.

  Sixto, Hassan and Bascomb knew Sonia; old man Mango knew Sixto; and now the old man
’s son Tommy was trying to work the edges around Sonia’s murder. And now Tommy wanted Bascomb. Brother Jimmy and McDowell were going to bring Bascomb where Tommy wanted him. Bascomb, who told Hassan I had killed Sonia.

  Tommy knew it all: He knew who killed Sonia. And he didn’t want it to circle back to his old man. He needed Bascomb, who ran with Sixto. Who might’ve been Sixto’s muscle.

  Who might’ve been the one who sliced Glatzer open.

  Takes a strong man to drag a blade through another man, through thick muscle.

  I heard the front door open. I heard Bella’s voice.

  She had been sweating and she’d had a good time. Look at that smile.

  “Hey.”

  “My ears are ringing,” she said as she tossed her fanny pack on the table.

  The glitter had run down to her cheeks. She sparkled.

  “I’d better say good-night to Eva,” I said. As I passed by, I helped my daughter wriggle out of her heavy coat and stuck it on the newel post. She wore a black, long-sleeved T-shirt with a big red star on its front. The shirt was soaked through.

  When I opened the door, I saw neither Eva Figueroa nor little Glo-Bug. Instead, there was Daniel Wu.

  “Hello, Mr. Orr,” he said. The pudgy boy was on the sidewalk, by the frail tree, and he tilted back his head to look up at me.

  Harrison was silent. The streetlights reflected on the damp cobblestone and I could hear the river run. On Greenwich, traffic rolled on: taxis, mostly; cars with Jersey plates, a 4 x 4. No military Jeeps, no backhoes on flatbeds. No black Ford easing to the curb, a redheaded cop at the wheel.

  “Enjoy the dance, Daniel?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You want to come in, warm up?” I asked. I was wearing red sweats cut off above the knee, loose sweat socks and the Oxford I’d had on all day. Its wrinkled tail hung free.

  “No, I have a curfew,” he smiled. “I have to go.”

  “OK,” I said, turning to get my cold legs back inside.

  “Good-night,” he waved.

  I stopped. “Hey, Daniel,” I said, “where do you live?”

  “Over on Walker.” He pointed east.

  “You want me to walk you home?”

  “Oh, no. I’ll be fine.” He puffed up his chest under his black vinyl jacket. “I like to walk at night. You know, with my own thoughts.”