Unmarked Man

by Darlene Scalera

  She looked at Tommy, thought of Nick. There’d never be any fireworks but that only meant less chance of getting burnt. “You know what, I’d like to have dinner with you, once I’m not so preoccupied with everything.” Contrary to her earlier fears, she had gotten a little wiser in the last fifteen years.

  Tommy smiled. “Here’s my car.” They’d stopped before a white Lincoln. “Can I drop you anywhere?”

  Cissy shook her head.

  He handed her his card. “You need anything, anything at all, you call my office. Day or night. If I’m not there, the service will take a message, get it to me.”

  “Thanks, Tommy.”

  He leaned over, pecked her cheek. “You promise?”

  Such a good boy.

  “I promise.”

  After he drove off, she walked three blocks to a branch of the First Trust. All the safety deposit boxes were rented at this location but some were available at their central headquarters downtown. Cissy caught the bus. It wasn’t even ten-thirty, but already the humidity had thickened like Mama Napoli’s sauce. On the way, the bus passed the Golden Cue. Cissy made a note of its location. A few blocks farther, Cissy waved to Gentleman George on the corner, looking uncommonly jaunty even in this heat. She got off several stops later and rented a box at the bank. Taking advantage of the small private room, she examined the cash. All twenties. A quick assessment revealed there was more than she’d thought. Easily fifty thousand. Maybe a hundred thousand. The amount worried her. Where would her mother get that kind of cash? If it even belonged to her. Had someone stashed it there, trying to frame her mother? Eddie? Jo Jo had used the car, too. Was it hers? Why didn’t she take it with her? She stared at the money as if the answers could be found in two stacks of twenties.

  She left the bank, her handbag lighter. She called Al’s Auto Palace. The Thunderbird wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow at the earliest. She dialed Nick as she started back uptown.

  “Where are you?” was his hello.

  “Heading uptown. Any news on my mother and sister?” she interjected before Nick could start harassing her to go back to the apartment.

  “I’m working a few leads.”

  “Such as?”

  She passed an office building, the travel agency on its ground floor with a poster of palm trees and white beaches and people with perfect bodies in scanty bathing suits spread cruelly across its storefront window.

  “So you’re on your way back to the apartment?” Nick ignored her question.

  Suddenly, in the storefront’s reflection, she thought she saw a man across the street, watching her. She moved slowly to the next storefront.

  “Cissy? Are you there?”

  She feigned interest in the shoes displayed in the store’s window. The man was medium height, wore his dark hair in a crew cut and was still watching her.

  “Yes. Nick, I think someone is watching me. A man across the street.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “He’s—” She hesitated as the man disappeared into an office building. “Never mind,” she said. “He just walked into an office building.” Feeling foolish, she moved away from the store window. “Obviously my imagination is working overtime.” Embarrassed, she changed the subject. “Ran into Tommy Marcus at breakfast. He told me to call him if I needed anything.”

  “Yeah, and what do you need?”

  “For starters, a car. My mother’s car won’t be ready until tomorrow at the earliest.” Several blocks up, she spied the neon sign of the Golden Cue rendered neutral by the bright sun. “I want to pick up the rental.”

  “We’ll get it tonight. I’ll pick you up after my shift. So, you’re on your way home now?”

  Home. She turned a corner, closing in on the Golden Cue.

  “Cissy, you’re on your way home.” It wasn’t a question this time.

  A customer went inside the Golden Cue’s doors. The bar was open.

  “I just have one or two stops to make on the way. I’ll see you tonight.” She clicked off before Nick could protest and headed toward the Golden Cue.

  Before television, video games and singles bars, every city worth its salt had at least one pool hall, usually more. But in recent years, many halls had closed, been converted or torn down completely to make room for warehouse stores or fitness centers. On entering, Cissy could tell the Golden Cue had attempted to avoid its fate by going respectable in an effort to attract an upscale crowd who called pool billiards and could be hustled by Cissy’s second-grade teacher, Sister Agatha, should she ever have the inclination. New lights had been strung over each table. A sign above the bar advertised Cosmopolitans and a complete wine list. The bartender was handsome in a fey way, not helped by the black arm garters on his sleeves and the pelvis grin of his too-tight pants. Not that Cissy was one to judge, but anyone from the neighborhood with any standards left wouldn’t be caught dead in here. Lucky for the bartender, who would have gotten beaten up on a weekly basis by the hall’s original crowd. Still, despite the accoutrements of a respectable sport, the place smelled of smoke and the swift con. Besides that, what had Jo Jo been doing hanging out here?

  Cissy sauntered over to the bar. She didn’t know her sister to shoot pool much, but she did know her to drink. If anyone was fast friends with Jo Jo, it was the bartender.

  He came toward her with a satisfied smile and an offer to serve. At least this was one place she could order a spring water with lemon and not get blacklisted. Some small groups were clustered by the tables but there were no other customers at the bar. The bartender set her drink on an eight-ball coaster.

  “Player?” He indicated the tables with a tip of his head.

  “No, not me. Have some friends that like the game, though. Maybe you know one of them?”

  “Maybe.” The bartender hedged his bets.

  “Jo Jo Spagnola.”

  The bartender showed no recognition. Cissy’s heart sank.

  “Small girl in her mid-twenties. Pretty.” Jo Jo was young enough the drugs hadn’t ravaged her looks yet. By thirty-five, she would look sixty.

  “Long, thick black hair, dark brown eyes, likes to snap her gum to music.” She hadn’t even realized she’d remembered that habit.

  The bartender’s face gave away nothing.

  “She might have come in here with a guy.” She didn’t say a name. If the bartender read the papers, watched the news, he might become leery.

  The bartender leaned against the glossy bar. “Who’s asking?”

  He did know Jo Jo. Cissy kept her expression neutral. “Her sister.”

  He smiled. “Big sister?”

  “What else?” Cissy wiped her hand damp from being wrapped around the glass on her shorts and extended it. “Cissy Spagnola.”

  “Otto Chandler.” The bartender shook her hand in one of those boneless shakes designed to make either her or him feel like a lady.

  The bartender blew out a breath. “Jo Jo’s sister, huh?”

  “You know her?”

  “You the hotshot stockbroker?”

  That was her current story and she was sticking to it. “She mention me?”

  “Tell you the truth, I thought she made you up.”

  “I don’t get home much.” Home. Damn, she refused to feel guilty or crazy.

  “And when you do, I bet you don’t hang out in pool halls.”

  “I thought it was called billiards nowadays.”

  They shared a grin.

  “So, Jo Jo’s meeting you here?”

  “Actually I was hoping you might have seen her. I just got into town yesterday. Thought I’d surprise her but the number I have is disconnected. I wasn’t sure of the address.”

  The bartender assessed her with a steady gaze. Despite the uptown appearance, he was no whipping boy. Cissy would’ve laid down money he wasn’t as fond of those arm garters as he appeared to be.

  “Place where she last worked told me sometimes she would hang here.”

  “She’s been in here.
”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Maybe.”

  Gone was the good-time guy.

  “Maybe I should tell the liquor board there’s people under twenty-one without an adult in a place that serves liquor in the middle of the day.” She surprised herself.

  “So what? I ain’t serving them.”

  Oops. Gone was the slick style now, a reversion to his roots. She had him on the ropes.

  “How ’bout I take a smell of their drinks?

  Otto leaned his face to hers. “Go ahead.”

  He called her bluff. She had nothing else and he could smell it. She reached into her purse and pulled out a couple of the loose twenties she’d found stuffed in Cherry’s seat cushions, making a mental IOU to her mother. Otto looked at the bills, unimpressed.

  “C’mon, Jo Jo’s not on the Ten Most Wanted.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very funny.” She tapped the twenties. “Go on, take it, get yourself some new arm garters.”

  “I’ll bet that smart mouth has gotten you into a lot of trouble.”

  “I bet those garters have gotten you in a lot of trouble.”

  His gaze stayed heavy on her, but he slowly picked up the twenties and folded them into his wallet.

  “Your sister used to come in, hang out at the bar until her friend came.”

  “Who was her friend?”

  The bartender straightened, shrugged one shoulder. “Like some of the after-five crowd that comes in here. Businessman. Had an intellectual look about him. Studied the table as if determining the trajectory projection of each shot. Couldn’t shoot worth a crap.”

  Cissy smiled. “You got a name?”

  Otto shook his head.

  “No name?”

  “He never came up to the bar. Stayed in the back. Your sister would get the drinks. Paid the tab in cash. Always left a good tip.”

  “How often did she meet him here?”

  “When I was on, about twice a week. More often the last month.”

  Two customers had come in. The bartender left to serve them, signaling her money was up. She pulled another twenty out of her purse. She reached for her water and took a long swallow, turning in her stool to give the place a final once-over. The bartender came back, eyed the twenty.

  She set her glass down on it. “Anything else you can tell me about the guy my sister was meeting?”

  He looked at the twenty. She lifted her glass. It had sweated a wet ring on the bill. She slid the money toward him.

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Like I told you, a regular-looking businessman.”

  “Tall? Short?”

  “Medium.”

  Cissy sighed. “How about his hair? Long? Short? Blond? Brown? Black?”

  “Dark, brown, thick.” He smiled. “Kennedy hair.” His hand fisted over the twenty. He pulled out his wallet, slid the cash inside, indicating again her time was up.

  “That’s it? Nothing else?” She scribbled her phone number on the coaster, pushed it toward him.

  He glanced down, but didn’t pick up the coaster. He lifted his gaze. “Ask Detective Fiore.”

  She went out into a sun strong enough to turn tar to putty and normal thoughts murderous. She pulled out her phone, left a message on Nick’s voice mail to call her. She passed the bus stop at the corner, but decided to walk her fury off for a few minutes.

  Her shirt was stuck to her back by the time she hit the crosswalk. Her anger showed no sign of cooling, either. Nick might think he had her best interests at heart, but the man was going to send her over the edge more quickly than the ninety-one percent humidity. She bought a soda from a sidewalk vendor, drank it as the crosstown bus pulled up at the next stop. She had almost made it when the bus’s doors began to close. She gave a banshee yell that felt damn good and the doors opened. She jumped on and sat down, panting, as she headed to the river and Eddie’s bar. When she got off at the stop near the bar, she saw Eddie’s burgundy Mercury in the side alley. She’d started toward the tavern when a dark sedan pulled up in front of the building. She ducked into the nearest open doorway. Through the name etched on the door, Body Designs by Dimitri, she watched Nick get out of the car, go into Fat Eddie’s.

  “Yes-s-s-s?” she heard on a long exhale behind her. She turned to a man smoking a slim cigar. She assumed he was Dimitri, if there even was a Dimitri.

  Inhaling, he considered her. He was slender with a blue silk scarf around his neck and a sashay to his walk that made Cissy admire him immediately. Any man who wore silk scarves and sashayed in the south side and had lived to tell about it had her respect.

  “You wish some body art, perhaps?”

  Cissy looked around. Actually she had had moments when she’d considered indulging in the current tattoo trend. Just a small one around her ankle, or maybe along the curve of her lower back to add some interest when she went to the beach.

  “You hesitate. You are afraid, perhaps?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Dimitri adopted a skeptical smile. She wasn’t fooling anyone anymore.

  She looked back to the street. She wouldn’t be able to talk to Eddie until Nick left. The view from Dimitri’s window was perfect. From this angle, she could even see the side of the bar and enough of the back if anyone went in or out through that entrance. Besides, she reasoned as she turned toward Dimitri and his cheeky smile, who knew how many bikini days she had left?

  Chapter Nine

  Eddie was at a table on the phone when Nick walked into the bar. He hung up as Nick came toward the table. He didn’t get up. He didn’t invite Nick to sit.

  “Little Nicky Fiore. How’s the family?”

  “That’s funny. I was just about to ask you the same thing, Eddie.”

  He picked up a cigar butt from an ashtray, chewed on it. “That is funny.”

  “Heard from Louisa or Jo Jo?”

  He looked at Nick, his eyes full of nothing. “They ain’t sent no postcards.”

  “You seem real broken up.”

  He leaned forward, killed the cigar. “The broad left me. I’m crushed.”

  “Left her car, too.”

  “Probably doesn’t want me to find her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’d kill her.” He relaxed back, his tiny eyes half-closed.

  “Heard you let Jo Jo take the car that night?”

  “I’m a nice guy like that. How’s my other stepdaughter, the smart-ass one? Heard she’s keeping you hopping.”

  “You watching her?”

  “I’m a family man—what can I say?” Eddie’s lips curled into a fat sneer.

  Nick leaned on the table with a leaden stare. “Me, too, Eddie. Sixteen years is too long to wait.”

  Nick saw Eddie’s hand twitch atop the table.

  “I’ve been patient. And I’m not a patient man.”

  Eddie reached for a new cigar, stuck it between his lips. A still, fixed look came into his eyes. “I got things to do, Fiore.” His smile stayed mean.

  Nick straightened, kept the threat thick in his voice. “Me, too, Eddie.”

  FROM THE TATTOO parlor’s window, Cissy saw Nick leave the bar. She waited until his dark sedan disappeared down the street.

  “Gotta go, Dimitri.” She started to get up.

  “Whoa, wait, crazy lady. I have to wipe with antiseptic, put a bandage on.”

  She sighed, sat down. Hard to argue with a guy who wore blue silk in the port. She propped up her leg. In the end, she’d chosen a small abstract design on her ankle instead of her lower back. She’d decided that twenty years from now, when her butt was heading toward her knees, she’d regret calling attention to that part of her body.

  “Leave this on overnight.” Dimitri applied a small bandage. She pulled out cash as he recited other care instructions, paid him and hurried to the door.

  She was about to step outside when she saw Eddie round the corner from the back of the bar and head toward the
street. She stepped back from sight, watched until he’d walked to the next block before she opened the door and followed him. She caught sight of him as he turned the corner. She hurried until she saw him again. She slowed, careful to lag several feet behind the cover of other pedestrians. He headed toward the river walk that stretched from the business district to the lower end. He turned once. She stopped, pretending interest in an appliance-shop window. She threw a sidelong look in Eddie’s direction. He was continuing toward the river walk.

  She followed him to the riverfront. Several years ago tax dollars had built the walkway that also boasted a bike path, benches and food vendors.

  Eddie walked a quarter mile before sitting down on a bench. He took a wad of tissues out of his pocket and wiped his face.

  Cissy watched from the street, blocked by a Mr. Ding-A-Ling ice cream truck. Eddie sat. He pulled the hem of his short-sleeved shirt from his pants waistband and reached beneath the shirt. Cissy went on full alert, but all he pulled out was a wide support belt that must have been wrapped around his bulging waistline to support the lower back muscles. He laid it on the bench beside him. Eddie and exercise? Cissy wasn’t buying it.

  He sat like that for several more minutes. Bike riders passed, in-line skaters, a woman pushing a double stroller with one child struggling to get out of the back seat, a nun in a navy blue habit who elicited Cissy’s sympathy. Not that she thought nuns sweated. Cissy bought an ice pop from Mr. Ding-A-Ling. From that distance, she couldn’t see any expression on Eddie’s face. After about twenty minutes, he stood and headed back to the bar. Staying out of sight, she followed. A block behind him, she saw him get into his Mercury. She ducked into the shadows of a doorway as the car passed, and she stood there chewing on a Popsicle stick, the heat and her frustration at the same dangerous level.

  With nothing more to show than a tattoo and the knowledge she was never going to get any information with Nick one step ahead of her, she decided to head back to the apartment and talk her next move over with the fish. As she stepped out of the doorway, she saw a man in a baseball cap and shorts a half block away. He looked familiar. She was becoming as paranoid as a politician.