Damaged Goods

by Stephen Solomita

  “Tommaso the Timid,” Gadd replied. “Who else?”

  Josie Rizzo stood in front of her daughter’s bedroom closet, sliding hangers from left to right as she examined the wardrobe inside. Mary was sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes glued to the television set, watching Carmine go down for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes. “Carmine’s dead,” she whispered.

  “How many times you gonna say the same thing?” Josie had never been happier. She had to admit it, had to admit that, for as long as the spirit possessed her, she hadn’t been happy at all. “So, whatta you think?” Turning, she held a white, long-sleeved dress against her chest. “Is it the real me?” When Mary didn’t respond, Josie put the dress back in the closet. The basic decision she’d made—to never again wear a black dress—didn’t offer a clue to what she actually should wear.

  Mary, interrupted by her mother in the act of dressing, had on a pair of beige panties and nothing else. She was looking down at her breasts, a bewildered expression clouding her face. “Tommy’s gone, too, mama.”

  “Whatta you sayin’?” Josie, a sky blue suit draped over her right arm, stared at herself in the mirror on the closet door.

  “Tommy’s gone, too,” Mary dutifully repeated.

  Josie took a moment to process the information, trying to decide if it meant anything. “How you know he’s gone?”

  “I watched him, mama. The night before last. I pretended I was asleep, but I saw him pack his things into a trunk. It was five o’clock in the morning.”

  Suspicious, Josie crossed the room and looked into her son-in-law’s closet. “It’s fulla clothes,” she said, dismissing Tommaso from her thoughts.

  “He only took a few things.”

  Ignoring the statement, Josie went back to her daughter’s wardrobe, rummaging from outfit to outfit until she discovered a blazing red dress with a flaring skirt and a matching bolero jacket. Pressing it to her waist and the base of her throat, she again turned to her daughter.

  “Whatta you think?”

  The ensemble looked hideously youthful against Josie Rizzo’s sixty-year-old form, but Mary, if she noticed at all, didn’t bother to comment. “Mama,” she said, “you’re three inches taller than me. And fifteen pounds lighter. You can’t wear my clothes.”

  “I gotta do what I gotta do. We’ll pin it.” Josie’s fingers played with the buttons at the top of her cotton nightgown. She wanted to try on the dress, but it’d been more than thirty years since she’d been naked in front of another human being and she hadn’t cared for it even then. “I’m gonna take the dress upstairs, try it on. You go find a safety pin.”

  Mary watched her mother stride across the room and open the door. “Mama,” she called.

  “Yeah?” Josie stood with her back to her daughter.

  “You’re holding your head up.”

  Josie snorted her contempt for the weak thing on the bed. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” she said.

  “I don’t know what that means, mama. I just thought you might have a sore neck.”

  “I think we need to talk about this tape.” Betty slid the edge of a metal spatula under the half-cooked eggs in the pan, dropped in the onions and peppers, flipped the omelet back on itself. “Specifically, about why, in light of the fact that its mere possession is a felony, the tape hasn’t been destroyed.”

  “I’m saving it for Hard Copy,” Gadd replied. “Whatta you think, Betty, could I get enough for the tape to make it worth spending a couple of years in a federal prison?”

  “Is that what you wanna do?” Moodrow set three mugs on the table, then went back for plates, silverware, and napkins.

  “No,” Gadd replied evenly, “it’s not what I want to do. What I want to do is go on the classy shows, Today, Oprah, Donahue, but they don’t pay their guests. I think it has something to do with journalistic integrity.” She looked at Moodrow long enough to be sure he wasn’t going to offer any help, then went on with what she’d come to say. “I’m twenty-nine, divorced, and living behind an office located above a porn shop.” She stopped again, this time to let Betty shovel a third of the omelet and several slices of bacon onto her plate while Moodrow filled her mug. “Many thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.” Moodrow filled Betty’s mug, then turned to his own. “You were talking about pornography.”

  Gadd flushed to her ears. “Look, Moodrow, it’s easy for a guy with a fat pension and money in the bank to play at being high and mighty. When you went into the job you were what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”

  “Twenty,” Moodrow admitted.

  “And you’ve had a steady paycheck all these years, right? Medical insurance, dental, disability …” She waited for his grudging nod before continuing. “Well, I’ve gotta put it together all by myself, and I can’t afford your ethical standards.” Drawing a deep breath, she forced herself to settle down. “Look, it’s real simple. Fate, for once, has taken a kindly turn and I’ve got a chance to get the sort of publicity that’ll put me in a real office. Not to mention a real apartment with a real kitchen. I didn’t ask for it, but now that the opportunity’s out there, I’d be a complete jerk if I didn’t take advantage.” She snatched a forkful of the omelet, held it up to her mouth. “After all, a girl’s gotta eat.”

  Betty raised her coffee mug. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Moodrow started to lift his mug, then set it down on the table. “I’m not gonna drink to an attack on the job. I can’t …”

  “But that’s the beauty of it,” Gadd announced. Her eyes were wide open, showing white above and below the dark iris. “I’m gonna put all the blame on the feds, say the job got screwed, which, if you remember, it did. That’s gonna be one of my main themes.”

  Moodrow finally raised his mug. “Sounds like you got it covered,” he said before drinking. “In fact, it seems like you had it covered before you got here.” Pausing, he allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “Unless you expect me to go on Oprah, back you up.”

  Gadd shook her head. “No, the impossible is not on my agenda.” She cut through a slice of bacon with the edge of her fork, put it in her mouth, chewed thoughtfully. “I need money,” she said after swallowing. “Before I go public. I need a real office, with furniture and filing cabinets and a phone system that’ll accept more than one call at a time.” Stopping abruptly, she leaned over the table and jabbed her fork in Moodrow’s direction. “Face it, Moodrow, sooner or later, Leuten Kitt is gonna talk to the media. He’s gonna tell ’em what happened in that apartment. Then, whether I like it or not, they’re gonna come to me for the story.”

  “Okay.” Moodrow waved her to a halt. “I understand what you wanna do and I’m not putting you down for it. So why don’t we get to the bottom line? What’s all this have to do with me?”

  “What makes you think it has anything to do with you?” Gadd endured Moodrow’s tombstone expression for a few seconds before laughing out loud. “All right, so you got me pinned. But my motives are not as ulterior as you think.”

  “Well, just how ulterior are they?”

  Gadd toyed with the food on her plate, stirring it for a moment with the edge of the fork. She was looking for a way to put the essential message that wouldn’t have her blushing. Finally, she decided to just get it out there and live with the red ears. “I want us to become partners.” Gadd felt the heat rise from her throat to her scalp, tried not to imagine what she must look like to Moodrow. “The idea is for you to put up ten thousand dollars, five thousand of which is a loan to me and which I eventually pay back. Eventually.” She raised her head, looked him in the eye. “The money isn’t the only thing, Moodrow. I lack street experience and I know it. I also know that I can’t afford to fuck up while I’m learning. Do I have to point out the obvious?”

  Moodrow shook his head. “No, you’re right, but the thing of it is …”

  “Just let me finish, okay. I can go out there and get money from one of the tabloids. The Star, The Enquirer
, Hard Copy … somebody’s gonna be willing to come up with ten grand, maybe a lot more if I can get them bidding against each other. I don’t want that. It’s demeaning.” She gave Betty an imploring look. “Do you understand what I’m saying here, Betty?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Betty’s smile was so warm it threatened to curdle the half-and-half.

  “How about you, Moodrow?” Gadd turned to face him. “Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll have to think about it.” Without warning, he burst into a giggle. “I’ve been a cheap motherfucker for so long,” he admitted, “I don’t know if I could hold my hand steady long enough to write the check.” He laid his fork on his plate, pushed the plate toward the center of the table. “There’s a third way, of course. But I don’t know if you wanna hear about it.”

  “Does that mean I don’t have to?”

  Moodrow grinned. “You could always find Tommaso. He’s got three million that doesn’t belong to him.”

  “I don’t have to find him, Moodrow.” Gadd shoved her chair back and crossed her legs. “Because I already know where he is.” She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got an appointment in exactly one hour and fifty-five minutes.”

  “You’re telling me he hasn’t left town?”

  “Uh-uh. Yesterday, maybe an hour before Jilly made his appearance, I picked up a message from Tommaso. He wrote that he was booked on a midnight flight to South America and he wanted me to come out to his motel and humiliate him before he left.” She held up a finger, cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t call him, didn’t think he had anything to do with Jilly or Carmine. The only reason I sent him E-mail was because I was bored. But, last night, after I saw the video, I got him on the phone and talked him into changing his reservations.”

  Moodrow rapped a knuckle on the tabletop. “Gadd, you tell me what you told Tommaso, word for word, and I’ll sign the check right now.”

  “Not a prayer.” Gadd’s solemn head shake was softened considerably by the lopsided grin on her face. “We’re talking privileged information here. Client confidentiality. So to speak.”

  “What’s it like out, huh?” Josie gathered the sides of the dress and pinched them in tight. “You always watchin’ the television. Is it gonna rain?” Releasing the material with her right hand, she took a safety pin out of her mouth and pinned up the left side of the garment.

  “Al Roker said it was gonna be sunny and cooler.” Mary was back on the edge of the bed, staring at her mother. Trying to figure it out.

  “Al Roker,” Josie sneered. “Like he was your boyfriend.”

  “Please, mama, he’s black. And he’s fat.”

  Josie turned to her daughter. “Looks okay, right?” The red dress, meant to fall to mid calf, was riding just above her knees.

  “Mama, you didn’t even shave your legs. And you’re wearing black sneakers.”

  “Nobody gonna mind.” She turned her back to her daughter. “Here, zip me up.”

  Mary got the zipper midway between her mother’s shoulder blades before she surrendered to nature and went for another safety pin. “You’re too big around the chest.”

  Josie didn’t respond. She was looking at her flattened breasts in the mirror. Amazed at how perfectly round they were, like a pair of large, shallow bowls.

  “Why can’t I talk to you?” Mary said. She was standing behind her mother, pinning the zipper. “We have to talk.”

  “Why?” Josie, as she slipped into the bolero jacket, was genuinely puzzled.

  “We have to decide what we’re gonna do.” Mary sat down on the bed. “And what about Gildo? He’s in jail.”

  “Gildo!” Josie sucked her upper lip into her mouth. Ann’s survival was the fly in the ointment, there was no getting away from it, but Carmine’s death more than made up for Gildo’s failure. There was no getting away from that, either. “Gildo gotta take care of himself.”

  “He could get the death penalty. From the feds.”

  “So whatta ya wanna do, break him out?” Josie walked across the room and yanked her black leather bag off a chair by the door. “Gildo’s a man,” she said, fully expecting her daughter to understand.

  “Mama, when are you coming back?”

  Josie stopped in the doorway, but didn’t turn around. She started to speak, then changed her mind, crossing the living room to the front door, fumbling with the locks for a minute before charging down the stairs. When she found the door to Carmine’s duplex on the ground floor open, she realized, for the first time, that Rose Stettecase was in mourning. Josie looked at the women gathered in the foyer, all of whom were staring back at her. She recognized several faces, the wives of Carmine’s paisons, and looked around for their husbands before recalling that their husbands were either dead or in custody. As were the husbands of all the women in the room.

  Well, that was too bad. Josie had nothing against any of these women, not even Rose. If there’d been another way …

  She turned away from them, opened the front door, and stepped onto the sidewalk. A light breeze curled against her legs, the sensation odd enough to make her look down for a moment. Then she straightened, pushing out her flattened breasts, lifting her chin into the air until she was looking at the world along the length of her nose.

  Moodrow was actually grateful for the traffic on the Long Island Expressway. He was inching forward, almost literally, a mile or so from Woodhaven Boulevard, trying to force his emotions to follow the car’s example. Eventually he’d come down, find a low to match the high inspired by the events of the prior day, but for right now he was still flying. He felt powerful, confident, like he could do anything he wanted to do. Like he could snap his fingers and the wall of hot metal surrounding his Chevrolet would disappear.

  Meanwhile, assuming Tommaso was actually sitting on Carmine’s buy money, there was every reason to believe he was armed. And if he’d stolen the money from Carmine, he was crazy as well. The problem, for Moodrow, was what kind of crazy.

  “I got lucky out there.”

  Moodrow glanced across the seat. Gadd was wearing Betty’s black leather coat. Its soft luster neatly matched the black eye shadow and dark lipstick on her face. “Say that again?”

  “Yesterday, when Jilly showed up, I was out in the stairwell. You know, having a cigarette.” Laughing softly, she pulled out a half-empty pack of Newports. “Speaking of which, I appear to be a nicotine junkie. Again.” She cracked the window, let in a stream of warm air. “Suppose I was in that apartment,” she said, “instead of on the stairs. I would’ve heard Jilly coming, because I kept the chain on whenever I was inside, but I would’ve had to shoot through Leuten Kitt to get to Jilly. I don’t know if I could’ve done it.”

  “What’s the difference? Whether you tell Sappone to shoot Kitt or threaten to shoot him yourself, it’s the same bluff.”

  “The difference is that …” Gadd flicked her ash out the window, then looked over at Moodrow. “The difference is that I would’ve had to look into his eyes. Leuten’s, I mean. I would’ve had to look into his eyes while I threatened to kill him.”

  Moodrow eased the car onto the exit ramp and stepped on the accelerator. “Actually,” he declared, “if Jilly had found the chain on, he’d have smelled out the trap and killed Leuten in the hallway. So I guess you were lucky twice.” He stopped for the light at the end of the ramp. “Or twice as lucky.”

  They rode for several miles in silence, heading south toward the airport and Tommaso’s motel, the First Flight, on Rockaway Boulevard. Moodrow, his mind back to the problem at hand, was trying to decide whether Gadd should talk her way inside, see if Tommaso was armed before they made their move. He didn’t like the idea of Gadd in the room by herself, even for a few seconds, but if they kicked in the door as soon as Tommaso cracked it open and he had a gun in his hand … The biggest problem was they had no right to be there. Tommaso, unlike Jilly Sappone, was just another citizen. How would they explain a public shoot-out? What, for instance, would they say if Tomm
aso didn’t have Carmine’s missing millions? If an innocent bystander took a round?

  He was about to voice his misgivings, when Gadd said, “Do you think it’s done now? Is it over?”

  “Ya know, Gadd, you’re being very inscrutable this morning. I don’t have any idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  Moodrow shrugged. “Okay, so I do. What of it?” She was talking about Theresa Kalkadonis, the sum total of what they’d done for and to her.

  “I was asking if we were through it. Now that Sappone’s facing the death sentence.”

  “Look …” What Moodrow wanted to do, in the worst way, was change the subject, talk about Tommaso the Timid, decide on a basic strategy. And if Ginny Gadd hadn’t actually been there, if she hadn’t jumped out of the car, run up to the still form by the side of the road, changing the subject was exactly what he would have done. But the way he saw it now, she’d paid for his mistake; she was still paying. “If it was over,” he finally said, “you wouldn’t be talking about it.”

  Gadd tossed her cigarette out the window. “You’ve got a point,” she admitted. “But it feels different now.” She looked up at Moodrow, the exotic makeup belying her sincerity. “I feel like I’m ready to live with it.”

  “As if you had a choice.” Moodrow ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. “As for me, it isn’t the first time I fucked up, just the first time I witnessed the consequences, so … Look, Gadd, the thing of it is that I don’t plan to jump off a bridge, and I’m not having nightmares, and I’m giving serious thought to your business proposition.”

  Gadd smiled, touched Moodrow’s arm. “That’s good enough for me,” she said. “Now, about Tommaso, the first thing is no guns. If I think he’s armed, I’m gonna back away, let the cops handle it.”

  Moodrow banged the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Jesus,” he said, “I wish you’d stop reading my mind.”