“I think Leah made a good point,” said a voice from across the room. Abigail, at the stove seasoning mashed potatoes in a way that would make them taste like something (a skill I have never developed), chimed in. “That was very good thinking, Leah.”
Leah beamed. Stunned by this strange reversal in his sister’s behavior, Howard stared at Abby. Since he was her brother, he didn’t stare the way most men stare at Abby. He was absolutely shocked.
“I don’t see how this is helping to develop the children’s manners,” he said. Maybe she’d simply misunderstood, or wasn’t picking up the cues properly.
“Maybe not,” said his sister, “but it’s an interesting conversation, and they’re developing their analytical skills.”
It would have been unseemly for me to leap up and cover my wife with kisses, and besides, it would have delayed the mashed potatoes, so I kept my seat. But I’ve rarely been more glad to be married to Abigail Stein. And keep in mind, I’m never not glad to be married to Abigail Stein.
Howard, on the other hand, was auditioning for a government grant to raise fumphering to an art form. “I just . . . I don’t . . . This is. . . he said, and never quite got a full sentence out.
Abigail, an unfamiliar twinkle in her eye, stole a glance at me, and it was everything I could do to keep from applauding. “Personally,” said my wife, “I think the gangsters rubbed Michael out because he was behind in his gambling debts.”
“Wow, Mom,” Ethan gasped. “Do you really think so? Mr. Shapiro told Dad he didn’t do it.”
“Yeah,” said Leah, “I’m sure that a guy who kills people and robs them and stuff would never lie.”
Ethan, who has had to learn such things from scratch, said to her, “That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”
“The official family language,” I chimed in.
Howard, eyes doing 360’s in their sockets, was clearly in the throes of a desperately hard choice: endure this unsavory conversational turn and his sister’s astonishing defiance, or miss out on a free meal.
It was a tough choice, but cheapness won. He stayed through dinner, and, the instant he finished eating, fled for the basement and a copy of a Jean-Claude Sartre tract. Andrea followed shortly after, feeling a sudden need to help clean up, something she hadn’t done for the five days they’d been in New Jersey. She and Abby had been lost in a quiet conversation for some time, and then Andrea also disappeared into the bowels of our home. Dylan, allowed now to get his video game fix, ran upstairs to beat Ethan to the PlayStation, and Ethan, just as happy, resumed his usual television schedule by tuning in The Fairly Oddparents, a cartoon show designed specifically to drive anyone over the age of sixteen to suicide.
I told Abby I’d be glad to take Warren for his constitutional tonight, and although she seemed surprised, agreed to skip the walk she usually enjoyed. It was possible the sub-zero wind chill factor played a part in her decision, although it had nothing to do with mine. She agreed to work on a Chanukah gift list, since the Festival of Keeping Up with the Goyim was starting unusually late this year, two days after Christmas, the holiday that unfortunately does not end all holidays.
I put on the Aaron Tucker outerwear collection (which means I collected all the outerwear I could find, regardless of whose clothing it might be), saddled up the dog, who was thrilled to be going out— and would be during an Ice Age—and ventured out into weather that was, apparently, not fit for man but okay for beast.
Naturally, it was dark, but even so, I had become accustomed to looking for, and not seeing, my three felonious angels outside the door. There was no sign of anyone, let alone three extremely large gentlemen who—for all I knew—were also packing heat. So I was deliberate and careful in approaching the usual dog route. I let Warren take care of his initial task, which involves the lifting of legs, at the first tree we encountered, and then sauntered casually to the corner.
Once there, in a conversational tone, I said to the dog, “I know I’m not being followed, but if I were, it would be good to see the people following me in a couple of minutes.” Warren looked up, blinked, and went back to sniffing the curb for remnants of something I’d rather not think about that might have been there three months earlier. Warren is very thorough, and has a nose that can pick up smells as far away as Moscow.
Sure enough, when we got to the same corner where we first encountered Moe, Larry, and Silent Bob, they were already standing there, in plain sight, although their faces were mostly obscured by hoods, scarves, and various freeze-resisting accessories.
“You gotta figure dogs think we worship them,” Big said when we arrived.
“How’s that?” It was nice not to have to deal in the usual niceties of conversation.
“They lie around the house all day, we feed them and give them shelter, and when they take a dump, we pick it up and bring it home in a bag. They’ve got to figure they’re gods.” He had a point, but I’d never let him know it.
“You have a point,” I said.
“You wanted to see us?” Big said. Warren, unlike Karen Huston’s dog, did not warm up to people he didn’t like, no matter how many times he encountered them (probably because he’s not bright enough to remember he’s encountered them before). So he was growling at the three Grand Tetons, and I held his leash tightly.
“I’d prefer not to have you around, but in this case, yes,” I answered.
“Is that nice?” Bigger asked through a muffler. “He says he wants to see us, and then complains when we’re always around. Makes a guy feel unwanted.”
“Sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t realize you were such a sensitive fellow.”
“I’m a regular Dr. Phil,” he answered.
“What can we do for you?” Big asked as Warren gave up the growling and set himself up for the evening’s entertainment.
“I’m glad you asked me that question,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
It was Christmas Eve, or at least December 24th, and under normal circumstances, it’s impossible to get anyone on the phone. I realize Christmas is a big holy day and everything, but I think the British duo “Everything but the Girl” put it best when they said of Yuletide, “It’s cold, and there’s nothing to do.”
Jews, at least those of us who live on the East Coast of the United States, have very specific Christmas traditions, and they vary remarkably little from family to family, town to town, or state to state: we go to the movies, and then out for Chinese food.
That wouldn’t happen until tomorrow, however, so I had one more day to decide who had killed Michael Huston, who was sabotaging Mahoney’s cars, and finish the revisions on the screenplay for Waterman. In that sentence, “finish” is a relative term because I hadn’t actually started the revisions yet. With Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday, I figured Glenn would give me until Thursday, at least.
If I had everything done by Thursday afternoon, perhaps I could squeeze in a little Chanukah shopping.
Abby was going in to her office, although the day was essentially useless, an excuse to hold a party where everybody got loaded and an unusual number of the men made a quick pass at my wife. The passes were quick because my wife is an expert at deflecting them, and then not telling me, because I’d just get upset. Women like to keep you from things that will get you upset, unless they’re the ones upsetting you.
I started the day early, since I knew that by afternoon, no one would be available, and I needed some people to be available. First thing Tuesday morning, as soon as I thought it was safe, I called Mary Fowler.
She was surprised to hear from me, but wasn’t, thank goodness, asleep when I called. I asked if she expected Kevin home for Christmas Eve, and she didn’t answer right away.
“Normally I would,” she said, “but I haven’t heard from him. I don’t even know if he’s still in Indiana.”
That was the wedge I needed to ask the question I wanted to ask without needlessly upsetting Mary. And there are people who think I’m not sensitive
to others’ feelings. The swine.
“Well, if Kevin were in town, but not at home, where would he be?” I asked.
“Probably at his friend Bill Mahovic’s house,” she said without much thought. “Those two have been inseparable since grade school.” Mary sounded surprised when I asked for Bill’s address, but she looked it up and gave it to me.
“I might be over later with Ethan,” I told her. “How late is too late?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Mary said. “We’ll be here all day. It’s Christmas Eve, you know.”
“I heard,” I told her. “Thanks, Mary. I’ll probably see you later.”
Ethan was sleeping in, as was his right during a school vacation, so I left him alone and decided to put the Very Famous Plan, the Sequel, into action. I called Mahoney on his cell phone and asked where he was at that moment.
“Still at the house,” he said. “It’s seven-thirty. I’m just about to hit the door.”
“For where?”
“Iselin. Near Metropark.” And he gave me the address. “I won’t be there for another twenty minutes or so, though. I have to stop on the way.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Wrapping paper,” he said, as if it were obvious. “It’s Christmas Eve, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was in all the papers.”
“You non-Christian types have it pretty easy, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I told him. “Try buying eight nights’ worth of presents on a freelancer’s salary.”
“No trees, though.”
“I’ll meet you there in half an hour,” I said and hung up.
I called two more of Karen and Michael’s friends and got the same glowing reports about their marriage—he took her out to dinner twice a week, bought her gifts for no particular reason, and actually enjoyed shopping with her—to the point where, by comparison, I considered myself as attentive a husband as Ike Turner.
My working methods might seem random and disorganized, but they really are. With any amount of time on our hands, freelancers will always find something to do. It usually doesn’t translate into an actual paycheck, but you never know. So the phone calls didn’t hurt, and when they were done, it was time to drive up to the Metropark train station in Iselin and meet Mahoney.
You probably don’t care what music I was listening to on the way up Route 27, but since the minivan’s radio works as well as anything else in that accursed vehicle, I can tell you it was hard to hear. Another day, I told myself, and I could have my own car back again.
Howard and Andrea had planned their trip to end on Christmas Day, the theory being that there would be less traffic leading up to and at the airport on the holiday. I believed it was more likely that it was cheaper to fly on Christmas, but I can’t actually substantiate that belief.
It was comforting to think of the Stein family (West) going back to its ancestral home while I made the trip to Iselin, which only took about fifteen minutes, because the heater in the van hadn’t improved any since the other day. But it did continue to bother me that I hadn’t been able to break through with Howard or Andrea. Dylan, I figured, was a lost cause.
On Thornall Road, leading up to Metropark, Mahoney was parked in front of a brand new Honda SUV, black and imposing, with frosted windows. The hood was open, and Mahoney’s head wasn’t visible as I pulled into the parking lot near the office building served by the road.
I called his cell phone number. “You all set up?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t even get the wrapping paper. Can you believe no card stores were open at seven-thirty in the morning?”
“Amazing. The car, Mahoney, the car.”
“We are free and clear to navigate. It’s a busted hose, I’m saying.”
“How far from being finished?”
“Whenever you say,” Mahoney answered.
“How will he get under the hood?” I asked.
Mahoney closed the hood and made sure it was locked. “He’s going to have to go through the interior.”
“Perfect.”
We closed up our cell phones and Mahoney got into his van and drove away, at least as far as the eye could see. I sat in my minivan, engine off, freezing my gazangas off and cursing the day Mahoney had decided not to get a job in a nice, warm office. He speaks three languages (which puts him two and a half up on me), and can converse intelligently on everything from the code of the Samurai to the batting averages of the 1969 Miracle Mets. He chooses to be a rental car mechanic because he considers it a challenge. Life is often cruel, but very rarely logical.
It could also be remarkably dull, like when one sits in a frigid minivan waiting for a sneaky rental car company employee to show up. I filled the time trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong with the Justin Fowler story.
I knew it should have been simple, so I figured I’d either been distracted by all the brouhaha in my household, or I’d been lazy, either of which is inexcusable in business, but happens all the time. I had a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome who had confessed to a killing and had the murder weapon in his possession. I had his younger brother, who was perpetuating the myth he was going to college in Indiana when he was, in fact, probably in New Jersey the whole time, and might very well have planted the murder weapon in a place where his older sibling found it.
There was also the clearly grieving widow, who for whatever reasons, believed her husband was indebted to gangsters, despite a lack of any evidence to support that position. She had a strange relationship with her attorney, and a dog who only liked me after we’d met a number of times.
And then, there was Mr. Shapiro. If he could be believed (and there was no reason to think he could, aside from his taste in ethnic baked goods), and he truly had no connection to Michael Huston’s murder, Hyman Shapiro’s interest in the case, and particularly in my welfare since we’d met, was especially baffling. He had three gargantuan henchmen providing me overtime protection from something so dangerous he couldn’t even tell me, the intended victim, what it was. And he was willing to keep them (said henchmen) working on the Tucker patrol until such time as Shapiro himself deemed the threat extinguished.
It was a knot of electronics cords, all bunched together. You know each one leads to something, and they might even work as one if you could ever identify and free each, but it was almost impossible to untangle each one in order to find its end on either side.
I was awakened from this metaphorical reverie by the approach of another rental car. Mahoney had told me the proper stickers to look for on the trunk, but any plain vanilla car that looks like it’s brand new is a decent candidate, and here it came—another in a series of Chevy Cavaliers. One thing you could say for the Mole—he was consistent and cheap. Okay, two things.
I started the minivan after he passed, when I was sure only one person was in the Cavalier. By now, I had come to recognize the Mole, although Mahoney, who had seen him only for a relatively long moment and knew some of the rental company’s employees, had not recognized him from work. He was, as everything in my life seemed to be lately, a mystery.
The Mole stopped his car in front of the SUV, very obviously looked around the area for any sign of Mahoney’s van (since he probably hadn’t noticed me at all during the Easton Avenue fiasco), and then got out and walked to the black SUV. Again, he looked from side to side before reaching into his pocket for whatever implement he was using to open the locks. I was surprised he wasn’t high-tech enough to have a wireless car opener that could be adjusted to whatever frequency would be necessary to open the door, but apparently the Mole was quite the craftsman, and he opened the driver’s side door quickly. He clearly was hoping to open the door, nonchalantly reach in, pop the hood, and then get his sabotaging in before anyone could see.
What he wasn’t counting on was the strong pair of arms that reached out and pulled him into the SUV. The door closed behind him, courtesy of an even stronger pair of arms. The SUV was absolutely still, and with the
frosted windows, no one would ever have known anything out of the ordinary was going on inside it.
I decided to drive down to the SUV, rather than walk, since walking would have to take place outside, and the minivan’s heater, however insufficient, was better than no heater at all. Besides, I’m from New Jersey, and the god-given right to drive to anywhere, no matter how minuscule the distance, is strong with my people.
As I was traversing the enormous 100-yard distance to the SUV, I dialed Mahoney on the cell phone.
“Got him,” I said, and hung up.
It took about six seconds for the Trouble Mobile to appear from behind the office building with Mahoney behind the wheel. By the time I parked the minivan behind the SUV, Mahoney had maneuvered his van in front of the big black vehicle. There would be no escape this time.
“What took you so long?” I asked when we were both out of our respective vehicles.
“Traffic,” he said.
We walked to the SUV as Mahoney cracked his knuckles inside his green knit gloves (company issue). His face took on an expression I’m hoping never to see aimed in my general direction.
He opened the driver’s side door as I got in through the rear door on the passenger’s side. In the car, Bigger was holding The Mole still in the front seat, while Biggest, behind the wheel, merely looked at him threateningly, and moved over when Mahoney got in. Big, next to me in the back seat, grinned with a malicious enjoyment of another person’s discomfort.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” I said to the Terrible Trio.
“No problem,” said Big. “But you understand, our employer is not to be mentioned in these proceedings. We’re doing this strictly as a (and here he grinned) “freelance assignment.”
“That’s very amusing,” I told him.
The Mole, a blond, thin man in his late thirties, was wide-eyed and speechless, despite the lack of a gag, or for that matter, any vocal restraints at all. The three huge men in parkas and the one huge man in the rental car overalls, whose face was screaming rage and violence, were enough to keep him from trying to bolt.
As Dog Is My Witness Page 18