I followed her out into the long hallway. As we stood under artificial light, she looked up at me and, by putting her fingers on my chin, turned my head to the side.
“You’ve got glass in your hair,” Julie Giada said.
As I went to brush it away, she stopped me and I bent over for her to remove the tiny slivers.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
I took her in my arms.
She held me around the waist.
A moment later, she stepped back. “God, Terry, I was afraid he was going to shoot you.”
Yeah, me too, I thought.
I said, “Maybe he doesn’t know I went to see his old man.”
Tommy had had this setup going without his brother Jimmy, who was now either grilling his father or looking for me.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she suggested. “Call Sharon.”
I agreed and walked with her toward the elevator bank, toward the gathering crowd, mostly middle-aged men in blue, who had come to inspect the carnage.
Julie reached back and took my hand. As we squeezed through, I looked over the crowd and I saw McDowell. As the young cop leaned his head against the green wall, he seemed overwhelmed, as if in awe of the thoroughness, the finality, of Mango’s deft solution.
If he had only looked to his left, McDowell might have seen why it wasn’t as neat, as final, as it seemed. He would’ve seen the eyes of the stranger, the eyes of the only man left standing outside the Mango family who knew their secret. A secret that had once been shared with many outsiders—Hassan, Sixto, Bascomb—now was known only by me.
“I can give you an hour,” I told her.
She looked back at me.
“I’ve got somewhere else to be.”
TWENTY
I got to the Tilt at a little after five, as the sun had begun to slide behind the buildings on the other side of the river, casting a narrow orange glow over the Jersey Palisades. The thin bright light spread its rays across cobblestone, onto old brick and cracked sidewalks, and I covered my eyes as I crossed Hudson, jamming the change the driver had given me deep into my pants pocket.
I pounded with my palm on the thick green door and, seconds later, I heard the lock snap.
“Welcome home.”
Diddio was wearing an old Ramones T-shirt and black jeans, black Chuck Taylors and Bella’s fedora on his head.
“Hey, champ,” I said as I squeezed in. We shook hands.
He locked the door behind me.
The lid of Leo’s jukebox was open and my daughter sat in front of it amid stacks of CDs on the Tilt’s grimy floor.
I must have grimaced because Bella said, “It’s fine, Dad. Leo’s cool with it.”
“We’re going Cuban,” D announced as he locked the door behind me. “Los Van Van, Adalberto, Cachaito, Compay, some old Beny Moré …”
I turned to Leo. He was on the customer side of the bar, staring up at the TV.
“Watch this,” he said, pointing with his cane to a sun-soaked veldt. “That tiger don’t know whether to attack that antelope baby or go protect her kittens.”
“Nobody called, Dad.”
Everything was OK at the Tilt-a-Whirl.
I looked at Diddio and gestured for him to follow me. I went to the omni-sex restroom and waited. A minute later, I came out and called to him by name.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said. He jogged 12 feet and he was winded. “I mean, I thought maybe you wanted me to go in here with you, but then, like, what if he doesn’t and I walk in on him—”
“All right, all right,” I said, holding up my hand.
“How’s Julie?”
She’s an aggressive, almost bellicose interviewer, I thought. But I was clearer now for her questioning. Once I’d looked over to Sharon for relief, as the eye of the video camera continued its relentless stare. She’d nodded in amusement, in pride.
“She’s doing fine,” I replied.
“I heard you guys worked it out.” Diddio nodded. “I’ve got to tell you, T, I’m surprised. Happy, man, but surprised. I mean, in my mind, I got you a widower, seventy-two years old, playing shuffleboard in Kissimmee, black socks—”
“D, what’s up with you tonight?”
“Tonight? I’ve got an Elliott Carter tribute at Saint Ann’s. Or Bakithi Kumalo at S.O.B.’s, or Jonatha Brooke at the Bottom Line.”
“Can you take Bella with you?”
“On a school night?”
“I’ve got to make an exception.”
“Be great, T,” he smiled. “People will think I got a date. Finally.”
“A fourteen-year-old date, D?”
“Maybe, like, I’m doing that Jerry Lee Lewis thing.” He punched my arm. “Only kidding, man. Hee-hee.”
I reached into my pocket and handed him all the cash I had on me: $84. “Go nuts.”
“I’m on the tit, man, at those clubs,” he said. “You know that. If I got to start laying out green … Woof.”
“Buy a decent dinner. Tad’s. Blimpie’s.”
He took two $20 bills. “Maybe a movie first. The Concert for Bangladesh is at the Quad. Poor George.”
“A classic.” I nodded.
“Fat Clapton. ‘I’ve forgotten Billy Preston!’”
“What are you two talking about?” Bella asked, as she stuck her head around the door frame.
“You’ll have to ask him,” I replied.
“It’s me and you, Gabby,” Diddio announced.
Bella frowned. “On a school night? What’s going on, Dad?”
“We’re going to have a visitor.”
“Detective Mango?”
“Bingo.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not that, Bella. We’re finishing up, that’s all.”
Unconvinced, she started snapping the rubber bands on her wrist.
“Maybe we ought to take this out of the bathroom,” I suggested.
As we reconvened at the pool table, I told Bella to give me her backpack, which sat, neatly filled, in the red booth.
Swiveling slowly on the stool, Leo said, “The tiger chose the antelope.”
“Of course.” Bella shrugged, as she passed the backpack to me.
“Tiger can’t be nothing but a tiger,” I added.
I looked at the clock above the cash register. Knowing Leo kept it 20 minutes fast let me calculate the time.
“I’ve got to rip,” I said.
I took the fedora from Diddio’s head and put it on my daughter’s. “Keep him out of trouble,” I told her.
“Who’s going to watch for you?” she asked. She smacked the cue ball against a side bumper.
“You. Our angels. Horatio. Who knows?” I said. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“You’re letting me stay out on a school—”
“OK,” I sang. “Call me when you’re coming home. D, be good.”
“Yes, sir.” Now he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by little CD towers.
“Leo, thanks.”
“What? She made my day.”
I went around the pool table, pushed the off-white ball back to its center and went toward the door. “Who’s going to lock up?”
Bella volunteered.
I looked out onto Hudson. No Mango, no McDowell. Taxis flowed south and, on the west side of the street, a woman with grape-colored hair and an old-fashioned peacoat paced in small circles, her tiny handbag hanging low on a gold chain. On the other side, in the fading sun, a teenage couple stole a kiss while riding Razor scooters, no easy trick.
In the distance, jackhammers continued to pound on Church Street.
“Be careful,” she told me.
“Sure.”
“I mean, you’ve got to tell me about my book.”
“I’m going to,” I said, as I stepped onto Hudson.
“A hint. Please?” she asked. “Did you at least like it?”
“Ouch. Whining …”
“All right: Please. Julie said you would.”
“No c
hance,” I said. “And I’m not being mean.”
“It stinks, that’s all.”
“All that work requires a nice, long discussion.”
“Yikes,” she said, looking away.
“You want a quick review?”
“Er, yes?”
“Did Julie encourage you to ask?”
She nodded.
“Does Julie seem like the kind of woman who’d let someone walk into pain?”
She smiled as she leaned against the open door.
“How’s Hamlet?” I asked. “Still greedy?”
“Sorry ’bout that,” she replied, with sad eyes.
“Forget it,” I told her. “A question: How old is he?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Your age?”
“He’s fat, out of shape and about seventeen,” I told her. “You think an adult could be that indecisive?”
She started to say something. But she stopped.
“See you later.” I pulled the bill of her fedora over her eyes and yanked the door closed. I waited until she did the lock, then I went toward our home.
I knew one of them would come when night fell, and, as the river rolled and small planes crossed the dark skies, as unblinking klieg lights shone on the devils’ deed, he would suggest we talk about it. He’d come armed with the knowledge that what would work best with me would be the appearance of rationality, the possibility of addressing mutual interests. So I was betting on Tommy. If Jimmy came, he’d be carrying a cannon, expecting I’d stick the Nine in his ear. Not that Jimmy wouldn’t come. He’d show someday, no doubt, and when he did, it’d be in a lonely place, and he’d do it swiftly, from behind. Which meant I needed to avoid such places and, if I stumbled upon one, I needed to remember never to turn my back; to put my back to the wall, always.
I took a bottle of Badoit and Bella’s backpack into my office and sat in silence, with only the light of the desk lamp accompanying me. And as I read, I thought I heard the rubato of Sheila Yannick’s cello: something modern, dissonant with long lines and few flourishes or filigrees. When I finished I went out through the living room, passing the soft chair where Dorotea Salgado had sat, passing Marina’s luminescent green water and mottled limestone arch, and, with the kitchen lights low, I got ready for my visitor.
I was lost in the stars when the harsh knock on the door came 45 minutes later: a Weill recital at the Lowenstein auditorium, with Marina at my elbow. Startled, I got up, looked through the peephole. It was who I expected; yes. Nervous? No. Edgy; on edge. A nice rush. Let’s get it done.
Before I undid the lock, I took another quick look around the kitchen. Under the somber glow of the lamp in the stove, I saw that everything was in its place—in shadows, gray corners, neat; all as it should be. And the nine-millimeter piece that, I’d discovered, had only eight rounds in the clip, sat in my pocket on the other side of the laundry door.
The persistent buzz of the refrigerator. The fading fragrance of Bella’s apple shampoo. The creaking of old wood under uneven footfalls.
“Tommy.”
The evening air was crisp and rich with the salty scent of the river. The streetlight flickered, as if sending code to the cobblestone.
“We’ve got to talk,” he said, looking up at me from the bottom step. “No surprise, right?”
I stepped aside. He lumbered past me, pulling in the night chill, and he took off his long leather coat and put it on the back of the chair near Bella’s Nursery of Crime as I sealed the door.
Mango made a big deal out of noticing the manuscript, rapping it with a knuckle.
“I heard about this,” he said. “My nephew. You read it or what?”
“Sure.”
“So …”
“Unexpectedly spectacular.”
“No shit.”
I shrugged. “None.”
As he put himself in Bella’s seat, away from his coat, her manuscript, he said, “Just what you need. More money.”
I leaned against the sink, felt the cold porcelain through my jeans. “You want a drink, Tommy?”
“Maybe a little soup. Escarole.”
I smiled and kept my arms folded across my chest.
“What did he say?” he asked.
“Tell me what he told you,” I replied. “I’ll tell you if it’s right.”
“He emptied the bottle, Terry, so he’s not talking to nobody. You know, he’s an old, old man.” Mango tapped the side of his head. “His melon, it ain’t too reliable.”
“He said he went to see Sonia. To apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
“Tommy,” I said, “we both know what we’re talking about here.”
“Enlighten me.” He ran his hands, his blunt, manicured fingers, along the edge of the table.
“He apologized for whipping up the scheme that got her thirty years in Bedford Hills.”
He nodded darkly. “Oh.”
“He wanted Sixto to rip off Glatzer and they’d split the take,” I continued. “But Sixto went his own way. He got Sonia to dip for the wallet, got Bascomb to kill Glatzer, he set up the girl, then he took off.”
“I see,” he said, the two short words dripping with cynicism. “And how do you figure this?”
“I talked to Sixto.”
“Nobody talked to Sixto.”
“I talked to Villa,” I amended.
“Hearsay is what they call it,” he said slowly, as if calculating as he spoke. “Don’t count for much.”
“What can you do, Tommy, when your father goes to see her and he tells her what she never knew—that Sixto set her up? Her fantasy, that he’s in hiding somewhere, afraid of being framed himself, that he’s going to come back for her one day, is shattered. Gone. She starts screaming, says she’s going to call the cops. Christ, what a nightmare.”
“I can’t let her take him down,” he said, slapslapping his thumb on the table. “You’re saying that?”
“I’m saying if your father had stayed on Elizabeth Street, Sonia might’ve been able to salvage something out of her sorry-ass life.”
He sat back. “So my old man killed her.”
“Hell, no,” I said. “Bascomb did. Jimmy hired him.”
“And that’s a fact?”
I said yes. “I spoke to Bascomb too.”
“Well, neither of them is talking now.”
“I’ve got to give you that, Tommy. Very effective.”
He waved his hand. “You don’t ever want to go to your last resort,” he said dismissively.
“But they’re not really silent,” I led.
“’Cause you know?”
“Me. And Jimmy,” I said. “Maybe McDowell.”
He shook his head. “McDowell is back in Queens. He’s a good boy. His eyes are open now.”
“And Jimmy?”
“He says you took his piece.”
I didn’t reply.
“Jimmy always had a temper,” he shrugged. “He has to learn to negotiate.”
I said, “I walk down a dark alley, Tommy, I don’t ask him to watch my back.”
He leaned into the light and looked hard at me. “You think my blood is going to give me up? They could take his eye and he don’t give me up.”
“No, but maybe thirty years from now he tries to apologize to somebody.”
He stopped and ran through it.
“I don’t see he knows what you know,” he concluded. “See, you know too fuckin’ much, Terry. And the problem, worse, is that people believe you. People in the D.A.’s. And Addison, who you dragged in I don’t know why.” As he shook his head, a streak of light crossed his silver toupee. “Too bad you had to wake up, Terry. We were all better off when you were fuckin’ pazzo.”
I was going to tell him I never was crazy, merely lost. But there was no point. I sensed he was headed toward where I wanted him to go. Why distract him now?
“So where does it leave us, Tommy?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
> “Soliciting ideas?”
“No,” he said curtly. “It’s time to lay it out.”
I moved away from the sink to sit in my chair.
“The thing is,” he said, “how to get you to keep your mouth shut.”
“That seems right,” I agreed.
“A guy like you, though, he has to talk.”
Not necessarily, I thought.
“I guess I could tear down this house—your wife’s pictures, your son’s toys. Memories. This book,” he said, nodding toward the manuscript.
“And that’s going to do what?”
“Maybe it needs to be something more, Terry. Something terrible and permanent, like—”
“I’ll burn down your fuckin’ world, Tommy, and you know it.”
“I’m saying—”
“Take away my reason to live and I burn down the whole fuckin’ planet.”
He frowned severely. “Now you’re threatening me?”
“Looking at her wrong, anybody, will set me off. So you keep that in mind and you tell Jimmy. Tell him tonight. Nobody thinks about my daughter, nobody says her name. Not once.”
“See, you’re trying to edge me into a corner, Terry, and that we can’t have. Ask Danny Villa. Ask that fuckin’ dunce Bascomb.”
He sat back into the shadows and now he folded his arms in front of his broad chest.
“What I got here,” he began, “is a guy who knows my old man tried to hook up with Sixto to rip off the Jew. For thirty years he sat on it while your Sonia was in jail. … What a mess.”
“Did your father know Bascomb killed Glatzer?”
He said no. “Look,” he told me, “you don’t know my old man back then. Believe me, all he’s thinking is no diamonds. He don’t give a fuck, I’m telling you.”
“So what about Sonia?”
“Sonia? You should be happy, Terry. Them that fucked with her are gone.”
“Bascomb, Sixto, Hassan—”
“Boom. That’s it. Finito.”
“Yeah, except Jimmy brought back Bascomb,” I nodded. “Symmetry. Sweet, in its way. What goes around …”
“Terry, this thing has got to run its course. You hear what I’m telling you? You know a lot of stuff nobody can confirm. Not anymore.”
“Like I said—”
He cut me off. “I’m thinking you make a lot of noise but it can’t work out for you. It can’t.”
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