I decided to see what the parameters were. “It’s not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then,” I said, “but I have tickets to the theatre, to a play I’ve been looking forward to seeing. And I get, well, kind of unreasonable about things like that.”
He chuckled with appreciation. “Cary Grant,” he said. “North by Northwest. Very good. Come. Sit down.”
So I sat down. In front of the desk were several very nice armchairs, which reminded me of the Oval Office set for “West Wing.” There was a table between them with a coffee urn and a tray of baked goods. Shapiro wasn’t only a big-time gangster—he could obviously cater. We sat there so Shapiro could show what a regular guy he was. In the presence of this slim little man, it was difficult to believe he was reputed to cause all sorts of mayhem and bloodshed.
“Bagel?” He gestured to the tray. “We get the best, Sonny Amster’s, from right here in town.” Sonny’s bagels are legendary, but my stomach wasn’t really in the mood for anything except abject terror. I shook my head. “Your loss,” he said, taking a bagel and placing half of one, dry, on a plate.
“Why am I here, Mr. Shapiro?”
“That’s good. To the point. I like that,” Shapiro said. He was doing his very best to be charming. “I suppose you’ve heard of me.”
“To tell you the truth, until the Three Stooges showed up on my doorstep, I thought you were a myth,” I said.
Shapiro took a bite of bagel (salt) and nodded, chewing. “Better that way,” he said when he could. “People don’t come looking for a myth, and my reputation is a lot more intimidating than the real thing.”
“Oh, I dunno,” I said, glancing at Big and Bigger, who were on their feet at opposite sides of his desk, looking on impassively.
“Believe me, I didn’t do half the things they say I did,” Shapiro continued. “I’m a businessman, and businessmen sometimes have to do things they’d prefer not to do in order to get ahead. That’s all.”
“No offense, Mr. Shapiro, but I’m not your rabbi. Why am I here?” If he was going to kill me, it didn’t matter if I was rude, and if he wasn’t going to kill me, being rude didn’t matter, either. Besides, I really wanted one of those Sonny Amster bagels now, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“You’re right. I got—what do they call it?—off-topic. You’re here, Mr. Tucker, because you continued with your investigation even after my employees here informed you of my preference that you stop. I’d like to know why. Has my myth deteriorated to the point where I’m not fearsome anymore?” That last question was delivered with just the right eye-twinkle to convince me he was trying to be witty.
“On the contrary, because I thought you were a myth, I didn’t think it was necessary to pay attention to you. But even though Groucho, Harpo, and Chico showed up and warned me off, I wasn’t able to stop.”
“Why not?” He seemed genuinely interested.
“Because you are fearsome. Because, if I got out of the way, a friend of mine would have been the next most visible target, and this friend wouldn’t be scared off. So I had to stay the most visible target to protect my friend.”
“That’s very noble,” he said. “I admire that kind of loyalty, however misguided.”
“‘Loyalty, however misguided,’” I said. “James Mason, North by Northwest. The same scene, even.”
“I like the movies,” he beamed. “But this is real life, Aaron.”
“The question, really, is why you want me to stop looking into the Michael Huston murder,” I said. “Certainly, I’m not so fearsome as to warrant this kind of attention.”
Shapiro took a sip of coffee from a cup on the table, and grimaced. “Decaf, can you believe it?” he said. “At my age, the bagel, with no cream cheese, is about all I can enjoy. And they call this living.”
“Why, Mr. Shapiro?”
He stared at me a moment, deciding whether or not to be offended. “Do you think it’s because I’m afraid you’ll find out I was responsible for the shooting?” he said. “Believe me, Aaron, you’re looking in the wrong place for that one. I had nothing to do with Michael Huston being shot. His death produced no benefit to me.”
“I’m told he might have owed serious money to someone in . . . your business,” I said.
“Dry cleaning? He owed a lot of money to his dry cleaner?” Shapiro was obviously having some fun now. “He had a pair of pants altered and didn’t pay up on time? I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps it was one of your other businesses,” I suggested.
Shapiro lost his mischievous grin and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Michael Huston didn’t owe me a dime. I had no reason to want him dead.” He actually looked sad.
“Then, why?”
Shapiro gave me a sharp look. “No,” he said. “You’ll get no more information from me, Aaron. I’m sorry.” He glanced at Big, and said, “It’s time for Aaron to leave.” Big nodded, and started toward me.
Oh, shit.
I wasn’t above begging, I soon found out. The image of Leah crying for her daddy was very strong. “Mr. Shapiro,” I said, “please. I have a twelve-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter . . .
He seemed confused. “What do you want, an autograph?” he asked. “I don’t do that. I’m not a good role model for the kindele.”
“No, sir. I just mean . . .
A light bulb went on over Shapiro’s head, and he laughed. “Do you think I’m going to have them kill you, Aaron?” he said. “Is that what you think?”
It had been. Now I was worried I’d insulted the old gangster. “Well, I mean, with the three guys and the black car, and . . .
“Too many movies, Aaron,” he shook his head. “I told you, this is real life. If I really wanted something to happen to you, it would happen. But I don’t want that, and I can’t do it now, anyway. Everybody from the Attorney General down to the cop on the beat watches this house, and if you went missing all of a sudden, believe me, this would be the first door they’d knock on. Oh, you’re safe enough, Aaron. But I still want you to stop the questions . . . as a favor to me.”
Having embarrassed myself by begging, I could now turn bold. I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shapiro,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
He nodded, understanding. “Well, there is one thing you can do for me, Aaron, and I don’t even think you’ll mind.”
“What is that, sir?”
“I got more than a dozen of these bagels, and I don’t want them to go stale. You’ll take some home?”
Sometimes, you have to make a moral stand and not accept anything from people whose actions do not meet with society’s approval.
On the other hand, these were Sonny Amster bagels.
“What the hell,” I said. “Sure.”
Chapter Two
Biggest got me home a scant few minutes before Leah burst through the door, shedding coats, scarves, sweaters, and backpacks like a snake dropping skin. Howard and Andrea were in the kitchen, waiting for me to make them lunch with my fresh bagels, and Dylan had disappeared into Ethan’s room and the sanctuary of PlayStation. I was trying to remember how not to shake like a leaf.
“Yay!” screamed my daughter. “No more school this year!” As I bent over to catch her, she flung her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’m free, Daddy!” Leah did the butter-churning dance, the international sign of joy for all people who don’t remember music before Justin Timberlake.
“Where’s your report card?” It always comes home the day of a vacation, so parents can forget what the grades are before school starts again, and not complain to teachers quite so much.
Her face froze, and she trudged to the backpack, lying on the floor in front of the door, unzipped it, and removed a small manila envelope with “LEAH” written on the front in block letters. Such matters are serious in the fourth grade.
Leah’s face lost its usual glow as she handed the envelope over. The kids are instructed in school not to look at th
e report cards before they get home, but nobody listens. So I knew she’d seen it, and she didn’t look happy.
“What’s wrong, honey?” She shook her head.
I opened the envelope, and took out the card. There are always statistics aplenty about attendance and tardiness, plus notes from teachers, including those teaching pass/fail courses like music and health, and other important information. The heck with all that— parents want to see the letter grades.
I scanned the card for the source of Leah’s consternation. English: A. Math: A. Science: A. Social studies . . . hey, wait a minute . .
“Leah!” I said, “You got straight A’s!”
She broke into a grin that threatened to leap off her face and take on a life of its own. “Fooled you!” she said.
“Why, you little . . . I hugged my daughter and stroked her hair. “I’ll bet you don’t do that to Mom.”
“Sure I do.”
I had made some tuna salad to put on a pumpernickel bagel, so I was nice about it and made sandwiches for Andrea and Howard, too. We sat down to eat at the kitchen table, and after Leah took a few bites of her peanut butter sandwich on bagel, I looked at Howard.
“So?” I asked.
He looked puzzled. “So, what?”
“So, is that the best bagel in the Western Hemisphere, or what?”
“It’s good,” he said with a note of wonderment at what all the fuss was about. Leah and I exchanged a look of exasperation and moved on.
Ethan barreled in when I was about halfway through my sandwich, and just as Dylan was coming down from upstairs. Dylan sneered in Ethan’s direction, and Ethan, as was his habit, entirely ignored Dylan.
“Where’s the report card?” I repeated.
Ethan reached into his backpack and produced it. He really hadn’t looked at it before now, because he couldn’t possibly have cared less about the grades he received. Ethan goes to school because we’ve told him he has to, and he’s never questioned it. Success or failure at his classes is entirely irrelevant to him outside of his vague desire for us to be proud of him.
The scary part is that our son could probably be the valedictorian of his class if he had any desire whatsoever to excel in school. He is a very smart boy, and will someday be brilliant at . . . something. But his almost total lack of motivation makes him frustrating to deal with. Frankly, Ethan would rather be playing video games, and that’s not unusual, but the fact is, he really would just play video games. Asperger’s is all about being the same as other kids, only more.
Dylan was trying to sneak a look over my shoulder as I assessed the report card. I glanced at him to get him to back off, but he wouldn’t. So I turned my back on my nephew and looked, but it was too late.
“A B-minus in science?” Dylan crowed. “In sixth grade? That’s the best you could do?”
Ethan doesn’t care about grades, but he knows about teasing, and has known about it since nursery school. He hasn’t gotten all that much better in dealing with it, and his AS started to flare up in its most visible forms: his face reddened, his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and his hands started to flap at his sides.
I turned to Dylan. “It’s really not your place,” I said. “I’m sure Ethan is good in subjects you have trouble with.”
“I get A’s in everything,” he said. I wanted to flap my arms and roll my eyes back, too, but somebody has to stay in control. I looked into the kitchen for Howard or Andrea, but they just sat and stared, chewing their sandwiches. Andrea was probably trying to figure out what the hole in the round Jewish bread was for.
“That’s really not the point,” I continued through tightly clenched teeth. “Don’t you think that—”
Ethan cut me off, furious. “Stop fighting my battles for me!” he yelled in my face. “I’m not a little kid anymore!”
Unfortunately, his outburst had more of an effect on me—I was stunned—than it did on his cousin. Dylan just chirped with an imitation of Ethan’s high-pitched voice, “I’m not a little kid anymore!”
It was too much. Ethan raised his hand to go for Dylan’s throat, and I caught it, holding his arm tightly. “Don’t do it, Ethan,” I said. “What you need . . . And that’s when it hit me. I let go of my son’s arm.
Andrea called to Dylan, gently, from the kitchen, and although he didn’t want to, he went to his mother. Ethan stared at me. “What? What do I need?” he asked.
Of course. It made sense this way. Worked for everybody. “What you need,” I told Ethan, “is to hang out with someone a little more like you.”
“Another Asperger’s kid?”
I nodded. “Sort of. How’d you like to spend part of your vacation investigating a murder with me?”
Visions of video games danced by his eyes and vanished. “Do I have to?” my son asked.
“Yes, I think you do.”
He rolled his eyes a little. “Okay. But not now, right?”
“No. Not now.”
“Okay.” He was halfway up the stairs before I could even blink.
Dylan was smirking at me from the kitchen, so instead of hitting him with a two-by-four, as I wanted to, I went inside and called Lydia Soriano at Snapdragon to give her an update.
“When will I have the story, Aaron?”
“When do you need it?”
“Next Wednesday is Christmas. How’s next Tuesday?”
“Um, how’s next Friday?” I countered.
“Aaron, this is a little five-hundred-word story you talked me into. The least you could do is get it in on time.”
“I think the mob’s involved.”
If I knew what Lydia looked like, I could have pictured her chewing over that piece of information. “Okay,” she said. “Make it seven hundred and fifty words. I’ll throw in another five-hundred dollars. And I’ll give you until Thursday.”
Chapter Three
“You want to take him with you on a murder investigation?” Abby was speaking quietly because her brother and Andrea were in the basement, and we were only one floor away. Abigail believes that sound travels through plaster and wood a heck of a lot more efficiently than it really does.
We were in our living room, ostensibly watching Monk on television. Tony Shalhoub is a genius. But we weren’t really paying attention.
“I just want him to come along with me when I’m talking to Justin Fowler. I think he and Ethan speak the same language, give or take some gunpowder, and he can really help me break through with him where I haven’t broken through before.” I was trying to ignore the fact that, sitting on the couch next to me, my wife was bundled up, sexier than most naked women.
She was making it easier than usual, staring at me as if I’d suggested we sacrifice our son to appease a vengeful god, and then go out for pizza. “You’re using your son as a lure,” she said. “You just want the story, and you don’t care how you get it.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. I’m not asking him to fly off with Victor Laszlo to serve the cause. He might even make a friend. Did you ever think of that?” I put my arm up over the back of the couch, as if it were encircling Abby. Like you did in the movies when you were sixteen.
“You want him to be friends with a boy ten years older than him who shot a man in cold blood?”
“Oh, come on, Abigail.” Tony Shalhoub was explaining how the murderer had clearly been a gymnast, and a left-handed one at that. The guy who played the serial killer who didn’t eat people in Silence of the Lambs, and who now plays Monk’s police captain employer, looked sufficiently impressed. “I wouldn’t bring Ethan there if I thought Justin had actually shot Michael Huston. But he can talk to Justin in a language I don’t understand. If Justin were French, and I brought Ethan to translate for me, you wouldn’t have a problem with that.”
“Sure I would. He got a B-minus in French.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I told her, as the guy from Silence of the Lambs (the actor’s name is Ted Levine) had his assistant slap the cuffs on the murderer and le
ad him away. “Besides, I don’t think it would be an awful thing to have Ethan and Dylan in separate buildings as much as possible until Wednesday.” Not like I was counting the days or anything, but there were now five left.
While Tony visited his wife’s gravesite, and I slipped my arm down and around my wife’s shoulders, Abby momentarily paid closer attention to the screen. “Hey,” she said. But she didn’t make me move my arm.
“C’mere,” I said, and kissed her, like I had wanted to do since, roughly, the moment we met. Okay, so I’d kissed Abby plenty of times since then, but that didn’t mean I stopped wanting to kiss her more. Ever.
She wasn’t in the mood for sentiment, though. The minute our lips were apart, her attention returned to her argument. “Are you going to take Ethan the next time you go to the gangster’s house, too?”
“I should have known your brother would rat me out,” I said, disgusted.
“I can’t believe you were keeping it from me,” she replied. “And besides, where was I supposed to think the dozen Sonny Amster bagels came from?”
“You’re right,” I told her, turning the TV off. “The only possible explanation for bagels in this house is that I was kidnapped by a gangster who refused to give the kids an autograph.”
She stared at me, puzzled and annoyed. “You didn’t tell me you were being threatened.”
“I knew how you’d react. I was going to quit the story, no questions asked, but I couldn’t leave Lori in it by herself. It might have put her in danger.”
“You should have told me.” It was her strongest argument, and she was going to get all she could out of it.
“Fine. I should have. You’re right. But it wasn’t Howard’s place to do it for me.”
Abby closed her eyes and leaned back on the sofa cushion. “Don’t keep doing this, Aaron,” she said. “It’s like an early Oliver Stone movie, and I don’t want to be Charlie Sheen. Don’t make this into a battle for my soul between you and Howard.”
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