A Well-Known Secret

by Fusilli, Jim;

  “No?”

  “I’m thinking what you want at the end of this is Weisz,” he said as he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table.

  We were no more than a yard apart now. I could smell his breath, see the simmering fury in his black eyes.

  “I think you’ll do anything to nail that fuck, Terry.”

  I nodded slowly. He saw me in the shadows.

  “I deliver Weisz in one year, by next April, and you keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life. And mine.”

  As he watched me, I bit my lip and closed my eyes. Then I absently scratched my head above my eyebrow.

  “I bring him to you, Terry. Down here. You want him alone in an alley, you got it. You want me to bring you him in pieces, one finger at a time, an ear, no problem.”

  I looked at him.

  “You like that, Terry,” he said. “I know you do.”

  “Tell me, Tommy,” I replied. “Did I have it? Bascomb back then, Bascomb now.”

  “I will say I don’t know why he did it. Very aggressive guy, this guy.”

  “And the diamonds?” I asked.

  He ran his fingers around his face. “Villa. Every cent, plastic surgery. That and to buy his way back to New York.”

  “If he’s one of the bad guys, why did he call me?”

  “What else could it be?” He shrugged.

  I thought for a moment. “Get me to focus on the Glatzer murder.”

  “Bingo,” he replied, pointing at me. “You’d wind up looking for Sixto. Which should’ve been a long-time dead end.”

  I shifted in the hard chair. “So you’re telling me your father had nothing to do with framing Sonia?”

  “You and this Sonia …” He shook his head. “No, not a thing.”

  I stood. “All right.”

  He looked up at me and then he stood too. “We got a deal.”

  “I got to do what I got to do,” I said, putting it as he would have.

  He reached for his coat and carefully hung it on his arm.

  “Who would’ve thought crazy Terry Orr would’ve become a pretty good P.I.?” He rapped the table with a knuckle. “Some day, huh?”

  He opened my front door and went out to the salty air, to flickering lights, to rounded cobblestones, to the relative silence of a Sunday night in TriBeCa.

  I went to the phone and dialed her cell number. It rang several times and I expected a recorded voice, but then she answered.

  “Julie Giada,” she said officially.

  “Where are you?”

  “Terry?”

  “Terry.”

  “Home, recharging my cell. Watching TV.”

  “I thought you might still be at Centre Street,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Home. You want a nightcap?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Let me get dressed.”

  “No purple gowns.”

  “Funny man,” she replied.

  “I got something for you.”

  “I hope so.”

  She said she’d be here in a half-hour.

  That’d give me enough time to see if this goddamned thing Diddio won worked.

  We were sitting at the kitchen table, espresso cups empty, the cookie plate littered with crumbs. All the lights were on.

  From the seat that faced the white front door, Julie Giada stared at Diddio’s prize, his silver DAT machine. “I can’t believe it.”

  I nodded. “The sound quality is remarkable.”

  I’d put the thing on top of the refrigerator. And to back up the built-in recorder, I stuck a mike on top of Marina’s “The Cliffs of the Gargano.” Triangulate, the instructions said, a phrase I hadn’t heard since the Warren Commission’s report.

  “No, I mean, how badly he played you,” she said. She wore a magenta turtleneck over black slacks and under a black vest with embroidered patterns that for a moment brought Safi Majorelle to mind.

  “You don’t think it appealed to me: Weisz on a plate?”

  She looked at me. “You’re a good man, Terry.”

  Maybe so. Maybe not.

  “He’ll come after you,” she added.

  “Tommy? Not after today. He does that and what happened at Centre Street doesn’t look too righteous,” I said. “Besides, it’s too late to turn back now.”

  “Or his brother,” she nodded.

  I smiled. “I know you guys,” I told her. “You guys will work over McDowell until he gives up Jimmy.”

  “For?”

  “For overexuberance,” I said. “For putting Bascomb close enough to Sonia to kill her. Whatever.”

  I heard the front door move, as if struck by a gust a wind. Then it opened.

  Bella, happy, tired, fedora tilted to the back of her head, entered, then suddenly stopped. Behind her, Diddio peered in cautiously. He looked over at Julie, then at me.

  “What’s this?” Bella asked.

  “What?” I said. “We’re having coffee.”

  “Hello, Dennis,” Julie said.

  He nodded.

  I knew him. He was thinking: Could’ve been me. His brain was racing: Julie Diddio, running with him along a beach, back to their loft near the tunnel, 2.5 kids, a summer place in Portsmouth, retire to Arizona, the moon-faced grandkids visit. A memoir, “Greasy Fries: Ramblings of an Award-Winning Critic.” I’m not feeling too good, Julie. Oh, oh no. Forty great years, honey. I love y— St. Peter; hey man, what up, dog? Where’s Hendrix at?

  “No, I mean, you’re using our DAT,” Bella said. She slipped out of her denim jacket, put it on the doorknob to the laundry room.

  “Yeah, and it works.”

  “Sure it works,” Diddio said, as if challenged. “It’s the best thing ever invented. Period. Better than air conditioning.”

  “Which reminds me, D, are you going to shut the door or leave your ass out on Harrison?”

  “Ass on Harrison,” he replied. “Going to S.O.B.’s. South African funk. Julie?”

  Nice move, I thought.

  “I’d better stay here, Dennis. Thanks, though.”

  “Yeah. Right. Bye.”

  “Wait,” Bella said. “Kiss, kiss.”

  They made exaggerated motions as if to kiss each other on the cheek, European-style, then intentionally missed by several feet.

  Bella closed the door. “So?”

  “How was your evening?” I asked her. “What did you wind up doing?”

  “Burgers at Walter’s,” she replied and, with a bad British accent, added, “‘I’ve forgotten Billy Preston!’”

  “Is somebody going to tell me what that means?” I asked.

  Julie shrugged.

  “Now I’m beat,” Bella said, “but what a weekend.”

  You’re telling me, I thought.

  “Leo’s not so bad, Dad,” she added. “He told me how to shoot nine-ball. And make a Cuba Libre.”

  She went to the refrigerator, withdrew a half-filled container of cranberry juice and started to hoist it to her lips. But, anticipating my criticism, she stopped, went to the cabinet and filled a jelly jar.

  “Bella, can you make a copy of this DAT tape?” I asked.

  She squeezed by me and lifted the small machine. “See this?” she said, pointing to its side. “I can patch it to my system. You want a CD or a cassette?”

  “Three cassettes.”

  She put the machine and the little tape in a pocket of her baggy blue painter’s jeans. “No problem. I’ll do the first one while I’m in the shower.”

  “Bella,” I said, “I don’t want you listening to it, all right?”

  She frowned. “Well, now I want to, but OK. Fine.”

  “Thanks.”

  She kissed me on the cheek with her sticky cranberry lips. “’Night, Dad.”

  I tapped her hand.

  She put her jar in the sink and smiled at Julie.

  “Good night, Gabriella.”

  She went toward the stairs, put her hat on the newel post and carried the bo
ttle of juice up toward her bedroom.

  After a moment passed, Julie said, “It must be nice to come home to her.”

  I nodded. “We’re doing all right.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. We’d have to wait until Bella, fresh from a shower, powdered, bare feet padding down the stairs, gave us the first cassette for Julie to deliver to Sharon. To pass the time, I was going to ask Julie to join me in the living room. There had to be something on TV; maybe she had a favorite program. Who knows? Maybe she had a little Sunday-night routine: lay out the clothes, TV with a snack, something not too … Or maybe we could talk about Sinclair Lewis. There were magazines under the coffee table.

  But to go to the living room, I’d have to take her past Marina’s paintings and she’d want to talk about them and I didn’t want to do that. I was tired, I had been frightened, I needed to get through the next few days, I needed my head to be clear. If I wanted to go to Foggia to sit in Rafaela’s fragrant garden and swell once again with the intoxicating feeling of acceptance, the warm, unfamiliar satisfaction of family; or stroll in platinum twilight near the Medina Azahara outside Córdoba and suddenly take Marina in my arms; or to ask her over a chilled Ostuni what she knew of the Majorelle Gardens in the Gueliz; to taste her fingers as I took a bite of the plump fig she offered—

  “Terry, I have to say something.”

  “Julie. Yes.”

  She stood and ran her hands along the back of the chair, then squared it to the table.

  Upstairs, the shower water ran. The pipes under the sink behind me hummed.

  “Terry, I think I know a good thing when I see one.”

  I turned to face her. She was blushing.

  “Julie, it’s not there,” I said, tapping my chest. “It’s not you. I think you are a very special woman. But I don’t have it anymore. It’s gone.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Believe it,” I said. “I wish it weren’t so.”

  She stared at me and I saw the beauty in her eyes, the integrity; and I saw she was groping for the right thing to say.

  But there was no right thing. I can put everything back to how it used to be, but without Marina, I am empty where my heart once was. Without my little boy—

  “I can wait,” she said finally.

  “I wouldn’t, Julie. Please. You deserve so much more.”

  She came toward me. “That you said that tells me I’m right.”

  She leaned down and kissed me on the lips. I did not reciprocate.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” she whispered.

  I said OK. I nodded. I think I smiled.

  I felt nothing.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The cabbie, a brawny Nigerian who crammed for his INS quiz at every red light, dropped us off at 65th and Broadway, in front of a bus stop surrounded by Juilliard students on their way back to Yorkville. The sun was behind us now, lingering above the murky green Hudson before it would slide behind the Jersey Palisades, and it cast a vivid light on the buildings on the east side of the busy intersection. The pale stone of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints shone as if in a celestial spotlight.

  Bella looked up at me. “So?”

  “Yeah,” I said, as I lifted her backpack that strained with textbooks, notepads and CDs. “I’m OK with it.”

  But I knew it was a different thing to be underground than to be in the golden light surrounded by laughing college kids, preening white-haired widows in fur, bus-boys jogging toward their restaurants after making quick deliveries, a harried man with a disorganized ream of newspapers who was late for an Iranian film showing at the Walter Reade Theater.

  “What’s in this thing?” I asked as we started toward Alice Tully Hall, crossing wide, lumpy 65th. “Cinder blocks? A bowling ball?”

  “Idle chatter, Dad?” she asked as she squinted, shading her eyes with her hand.

  “That obvious, huh?” I felt an unfamiliar nervousness in my stomach and knots of tension in my shoulders, my neck: the slow, insidious version of the crushing attack of anguish, of dread, that I’d suffered last week on the platform at Willet’s Point.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she said with mature assurance. “Really.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  She hesitated. “No, but I wanted to. Daniel said he would go with me.”

  “But … ?”

  “We should do it together,” she told me firmly.

  “Says Dr. Harteveld.”

  “No. Says me.”

  On the island between Broadway and Columbus, a green, post-industrial pagoda held an elevator that descended to the platform for the downtown trains.

  With Davy in the stroller, Marina would’ve used that elevator to go underground.

  I was listening to NPR when my daughter came down for breakfast. As she handed me the two cassettes, I asked her if she’d listened to the terse, cryptic conversation I’d had with Tommy Mango.

  She came around behind me, pushed a Pop-Tart into the toaster, dug with her index finger for a vitamin in the white tube. “What did you tell me?”

  “You always do what I tell you?” I asked.

  She went to her seat and tugged the front page of the Times toward her.

  “So this is what it’s all about,” she said as she read a story below the fold. “Tommy the Cop killed two guys, including Danilo Villa.” She looked up at me. “Isn’t he the guy—”

  “He’s the guy.”

  “I think he spoke at my school. When I was in the sixth grade.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Summarize,” she said.

  “Fly right. Be good to your friends. Money is worth less than you think. Secrets are a myth. And always do what your dad says.”

  “Instead of what he does …”

  “Exactly.” Then I said, “Maybe that last one wasn’t part of it. No, not really.”

  A man takes an oath, even a man like Ernie Mango, and he must mean what he says, he must do what he says he’ll do. Held against the value of a man’s word, diamonds should be an easy temptation to avoid. Held against a man’s honor, all temptation ought to be.

  I told Tommy the Cop this: “I got to do what I got to do.”

  He found out a little after 3:15 A.M. that we didn’t have a deal.

  I looked across the table at the archive photo of Danny Villa in the Times and I thought of the old snapshot Hassan had given me, of two boyhood friends hanging their arms on each other’s shoulders. I thought of the terror in young Sonia’s eyes in the Daily News photos I’d seen on microfiche.

  The toaster popped behind me. I waved Bella back into her chair and got her breakfast, scorching the tips of my fingers as I flipped the fruit-filled pastry slabs onto a plate.

  “Juice,” she instructed.

  I looked at her. She wore a navy-blue hoody with Japanese characters across the chest, black jeans, her Cons. I thought I noticed she’d reduced the number of rubber bands on her wrist. There was a system at work, but I couldn’t fathom it.

  “I believe you took the bottle upstairs.”

  “Empty now, but we have more.”

  And we did, on the top shelf, in back.

  As I handed her a glass of cranberry juice, I said, “Give me the original tape.”

  She clucked her tongue and reached into the pouch of her sweatshirt. “Here.”

  I dropped the tape into my shirt pocket. Into my safe-deposit box it would go.

  “Why do you need three?” she asked. “I mean, we gave one to Julie. …”

  “One for Luther Addison—”

  “You’re talking to him? That’s encouraging.”

  “Bella—”

  “I’m observing. That’s all.”

  “And the other is for a reporter at the Times.”

  “Coombs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Symmetry,” she said. “I like it.” She crammed a corner of the Pop-Tart into her mouth.

  “What time do you get ou
t today?” I asked.

  She chewed, swallowed and said, “Two.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to do something.”

  She drew up. “Dad, I’m a little, you know, too old for my daddy to be—”

  “I thought we’d go to Lincoln Center. To the subway station.”

  She stopped as if dumbstruck. “Really?” she said finally.

  “It’s time.” There has to be an end to greed.

  “Well, it’s actually past time, but yeah, sure. Count me in.”

  “And we can talk about your book. Your very good book.”

  Chewing again, she merely nodded, as she considered what it meant to visit the place where her mother and brother were killed. But I could see that the compliment pleased her.

  NPR now had us in Uruguay. The government wanted in on the Declaration of Paris about 150 years too late.

  I turned to look at the clock in the stove. “We gotta go.”

  She passed her plate to me. “You’re taking me to school too?”

  “I’m going your way.”

  “I’m seven again.” She slipped her arms into her denim jacket. “Goody. I should’ve asked you to cut my breakfast into teeny wittle pieces.”

  I had to go to the bank, to Midtown North to find Addison, to the Times on 43rd.

  I was going to find Dorotea Salgado. I owed her the story. She deserved to know. She wouldn’t have her daughter to hold, but maybe, before her world became a torrent of confusion brought on by Alzheimer’s, she’d sleep better knowing her Sonia’s hands were clean.

  Maybe then a few minutes with Mrs. Maoli. Something about approval, about external validation. About extended family.

  Then I’d catch up with my daughter at Walt Whitman.

  “Ready?” I went for my coat. The Nine was still in the pocket.

  “Ready,” she replied as she hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder.

  I opened the door and we went out into the morning chill.

  Outside Alice Tully Hall, glass-encased posters were set like dominoes ready to tumble. One announced that it was the year of Rachmaninoff.

  “Let it go, Dad,” Bella said.

  “What?”

  “You’re staring at the poster,” she said, “and you’re thinking about the wrong stuff.”

  As I nodded, she pointed north. “After, let’s go and spend some money. Buy you some clothes. I’ll treat you to a new blazer.”