“You said he was freaky.”
She nodded lightly.
“You and Zoran…”
“He was a pretty little boy, at least in the beginning, until the pierced tongue and the shaved head and spider tattoo. And he became possessive and he had a temper and…and—”
“And he beat you.”
“I like to say that our disagreements became physical.”
“Lovers’ spats?”
“No, not after the Just a Guy thing. We were through by then. From then on, it was always about money. Selling his work and getting him the kind of money he made as Bullethead. What hubris, Terry. Fury and hubris.”
“And this is the guy you trusted to go after Judy?”
“I?” She shook her head fiercely. “She asked me if I knew where she could find Zoran. Nothing more.” She pointed at me and wagged her finger. “Terry, you couldn’t possibly—”
“Lin-Lin.”
“Lin-Lin,” she repeated.
“It’s all her? Her plan?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Absolutely. Completely.”
I stood again. “We have to go somewhere, Edie.”
“Why? I told you what I know.”
“It’ll be good for you.” I ran my hand along the stubble on my face.
“Must I?”
I didn’t reply.
She said, “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“You need fresh air,” I replied. “Sunlight.”
The driver in his dark suit lazily strolled to the passenger’s side and opened the back door. I let Edie slide in and I climbed in next to her, grateful that Bella had ordered a simple black Town Car.
When the driver squeezed behind the wheel, I told him to get onto Sixth. “Unless there’s a parade.”
“No parade,” he grunted as he took the car away from the hydrant.
“Terry, where are we going?” Edie asked nervously.
I reached across her to tap down the door lock. As I pulled back, I caught a faint scent of her perfume: orange, sandalwood.
“Relax, Edie. Enjoy the sights: Look to your right in a minute or two and you’ll see Washington Square Park. All those plant shops on Sixth. Macy’s. The Library: be interesting to see what’s up at Bryant Park.” If we had to go that far north.
“Terry, I don’t understand.” She adjusted her black raincoat, tugging it over her knees.
The driver looked at me in the rearview.
“You will,” I said, as I pulled the cell from my jacket pocket.
I punched in Julie’s number.
She knew. She knew before I asked the driver to pull over.
She tried a joke. “We could’ve come by subway, Terry. Your underground is—”
“I don’t take the subway, Edie.”
I haven’t been on the subway since Marina and Davy were killed. Nor have I been in a subway station. Bella once asked if we could visit where her mother and brother had died, but I said no.
“No. Of course not.”
We went north to 50th, hung a right by Radio City and passed the meandering tourists at Rockefeller Center. At Madison, we went left and pushed north on the avenue, which was characteristically and yet eerily empty on a Sunday morning. We passed the brownstone spires of St. James’s, Breuer’s granite cubes, then the white-and-gold awning of the posh Carlyle, and I told the driver to pull over at the center of 76th. He did, and Edie and I got out of the black car and walked past a frail tree, its earth moist, its fingerlike branches stretching toward the damp, lazy sky.
I pointed to the storefront. Behind its security gate, windows were splattered with hastily applied whitewash, its door with pages of the Daily News. Inside, the telltale signs of construction: yellow electric cords, collapsable work benches, buckets, a push broom, sawdust; disarray, promise, hope, aspiration.
“Explain,” I said.
“Terry, I haven’t yet spoken to Judy.”
“How does an assistant afford to open a gallery on Madison and 75th?”
She put her thin hands into her coat pockets. “I have backers. A few.”
I shook my head. “The lease is in your name, Edie. Your ambition’s not going to let you share.”
“I have saved. I can be frugal.” She smiled uneasily.
“You can pony up $5,000, $6,000 a month?” I smiled in return. “I don’t think so.”
I came away from the storefront window, edging back closer to the car.
“I should speak to Judy,” she said. As if that would make it right.
Pretending to tidy the glove compartment, the driver was eavesdropping through the crack he’d made in the passenger’s-side front window.
“There’s someone else you should speak to, Edie.”
I leaned to open the back door.
Tommy Mango sat in his spot at the bend in the Delphi counter, next to the wall nearest the dingy rest room and, importantly, the pay phones. Glowering, hunched, he had both elbows on the brown Formica and his huge hands surrounded an industrial-style porcelain cup filled with steaming hot water, lemon juice and a few drops of Tabasco sauce. Tommy the Cop liked his whiskey in quantity—Booker’s, but would settle for Jim Beam—and tried to assuage his daily hangover with a nearoverdose of acetaminophen and antihistamines; as a result, his nasal passages were as dry as parchment paper and he treated his head each morning to a mini-steam bath.
I nudged Edie toward Mango’s corner in the railroad-car-shaped diner. Tommy was the physical opposite of his brother Jimmy, with the exception of a faint trace of similarity at the center of the face. Under a Sinatra-like silver toupee, he was strong and sturdy, without any evidence of fat on top of muscle. He preferred sharp-cut suits, silk shirts and a diamond-studded pinky ring, dressing more like a post-Gotti mobster than a detective. He wore an oversized 44 under his jacket and he allowed it to show when he leaned forward in his seat. He wore a small piece around his left ankle, one I’d never seen.
He saw us coming and he studied Edie up and down without much subtlety. With his pantherlike eyes and heavily applied self-confidence, he exuded a kind of controlled power that certain women found inviting. I could’ve told him Edie wasn’t going to be one of them: She preferred Slavic boys with skullcap tattoos who could forge art and fire explosives.
“Tommy,” I said.
“Terry Orr.” He gestured toward Edie. “You back in the game or what?”
I introduced Edie to him. “The gallery explosion on Greene.”
“The one you got my brother doing a sit on over on 14th?”
I said no. “About the gallery. She knows.”
Mango tapped the padded stool.
Edie sat next to him, while I sat at her elbow on the near side of the bend, facing a glass case boasting seven-layer chocolate cakes and pies with yellow filling and towering meringue caps. From behind the swinging door to the kitchen came the faint strains of talk radio and the clatter of pots and pans.
“Ruthie,” Mango shouted. “Two coffees.”
The laconic, white-haired waitress, who had been serving the only other customer at the counter, poured two cups and delivered them.
“Terry Orr,” he said to Ruthie. “His girlfriend Edie.”
I let it go as the weary waitress nodded, then walked away.
“Thank you,” Edie said, her voice thin, hollow. Mango patted her hand, squeezed it, then set it free.
I looked around the narrow diner. The Delphi could hold about 75 people and was nearly empty.
Mango said, “On the weekends, it’s crowded at four in the morning, empty at eleven. Brunch is killing these guys.”
I nodded.
He pointed to the wound under my chin. “My brother Jimmy give you that? I heard he took you for a half a yard at the courts. He says you still got game.”
“I got shit, Tommy. But I got this.” I pointed at Edie.
Mango snapped his fingers and Ruthie returned, pad in hand. “Give me a fresh cup,” he said. “Plenty of steam.” He looked at E
die and winked. “I’m going to take it easy someday.”
She smiled uncomfortably.
“Tommy—”
He held up a thick finger and we waited until the waitress brought him his concoction, then he gestured for me to continue.
“It plays like this: Somebody wants to shut down the gallery,” I said.
“Rivalry. Conflict. I like this,” Mango said.
“Edie or Lin-Lin Chin, the artist’s wife. Or Edie and Lin-Lin.”
Edie said, “Terry, I tried to explain.” Her voice quivered. “I thought you—”
Tommy the Cop looked at her; his glare shut her down. “Everybody gets a turn, sweetheart. Terry?”
“How’s this?” I said. “Lin-Lin wants to take Beck from Judy, and Edie can represent him if they pull off the explosion and close down the gallery. Edie’s got her own place uptown.”
“No, Terry,” Edie choked.
I nodded toward her. “She says it was all Lin-Lin’s idea.”
Mango asked, “That’s how they do it in SoHo, with dynamite? You don’t call a lawyer?”
“What if Beck doesn’t want to go?” I said to Mango.
He turned to Edie.
She said, “Sol wanted to stay with Judy. He was excited about the opening. He’s fond of that work, that sentimental work.”
“You think he can do better?” I asked.
“I know he can. He has,” she said. “He can be big, if he expresses.”
“So if this Judy loses her gallery, this Beck goes with you,” Mango said. “Cute.”
“She’s going to open her place with a bunch of new paintings by Beck. Maybe get a little boost from the publicity about the explosion.”
I turned to Mango. “She’s going to tell you nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
Mango smirked. “So who smacked the Chinese broad? You?”
“No,” Edie said sharply.
“You, Terry?”
I shook my head. “They hired a guy named Zoran Vuk to do the bombing. When Judy got hurt, they wouldn’t pay. So he took it out in flesh and bone.”
Mango stared into the distance as I spoke. Then, he said, “So you think we ought to talk to this Vuk.”
“Edie can tell you where to find him.”
“I can’t guarantee that. Lin-Lin made—”
Mango cut her off with a hard glance. “If he’s legal, it’s no problem.”
“He is,” Edie volunteered meekly.
Mango asked, “You know this guy?”
She hesitated. “I did, a while ago.”
Mango nodded. He tugged at his ecru collar. “All right, Terry. Terry Orr, P.I. So what’s the quid pro quo here?”
“None.”
He slid his hand onto Edie’s back. “You want her out of this.”
“Fuck no. I want you to bury her ass.”
Edie looked at me. She had a tear in her eye.
“You knew what was going to happen the moment Lin-Lin asked you to find Vuk,” I told her. “Now I know why you stayed, Edie. You planned on dropping the whole thing on Lin-Lin.”
“Oh,” said Mango, dripping sarcasm. “When love goes bad …”
A haggard man in a GI jacket came up to the counter and asked for coffee. Ruthie complied. Mango waved to her and slid a dollar in her direction. The slouching, scruffy man nodded his thanks.
Mango withdrew his hand from Edie’s back. “Honey, you and me, let’s take a ride.”
Edie looked at me, then looked away. “When can I call a lawyer?”
“Soon, sweetheart, soon,” Mango cooed. He turned to me. “We’ll pick up the Chinese broad.”
“You have to, you have to.” I gave him their address in the West Village.
“All right,” he said, as he sat up and tugged at his suit jacket. “You want a call?”
I said no. But I knew I’d get one anyway, if not from him, then from Beck.
Without looking at me, he stuck out his hand and I shook it. “Maybe, Mister P.I., you got a future,” Tommy the Cop said, as he adjusted his jacket. “Maybe I ought to keep an eye on you. You think?”
As I stood, he shouted, “Ruthie!”
When the waitress turned, he crooked his finger and she dragged her body over to him.
As I went for the door, I heard him say, “Ruthie, I’m ready for a little something. Toast, maybe. Four slices, no butter. And an egg cream. To go. Do that for me right away, all right, honey? All right.”
Mei Carissima:
We have a change in policy now, a new rule. Bella is going to take a shower before going to bed, instead of first thing in the morning. “It just makes sense, Dad,” she explained, as she dragged herself along Greenwich after a burger at Harry’s. As a rule, no: Her hair will be a tangled mess when she wakes up. But in order to steal an extra few minutes’ sleep after staying awake until 3 a.m., okay. She’s upstairs, singing off-key, quoting Shaw: “Welcome our friend, the enemy?”
I saw Arno today, Marina, and I saw you, though I did my best to avoid you. But you were there, in a four-color photo, next to Susan Rothenberg, with your charm, your vitality, your smile. And you were there, in one magazine did not have to open to see you: I remember what Helena Sing wrote: “She is mature, she is light. A strong visual experience gives way to an experience of the heart.” I have that issue in my desk, in a drawer next to my knee; I can see your photo when I want. And I often do. And it is merely an image on a page and I stare, and suddenly, I feel you in this small room and I expect you to run your fingers through my hair, or knead the back of my neck, or to say, “Terry…”
Marina, memories are so vivid tonight: We are in Bitonto. Do you remember this? Before you would agree to be married you insisted I meet your family. We flew to Italy on a crowded Alitalia overnight flight: that pinched-nose woman in front of me who insisted on reclining her seat from the moment of takeoff until we were about to land, pinning my knees to the seatback for more than seven hours; and the pudgy six-month-old behind us who cried for at least half of the flight as his parents quarreled about who was to blame for his wailing and tears. I was already anxious—I didn’t want anything to ruin this very good thing I had, Marina, this life-defining thing. You know I worried that your family might disapprove. You told me Rafaela was very opinionated—and I came off the Rome-to-Bari leg of the trip limping and worn and in need of a shower and a shave and about 10 hours’ sleep before I was ready to meet anybody I needed to impress. I told you that.
But of course, Benedicto and Rafaela were at the boxsized airport to greet us. Rafaela with the bouquet of wildflowers. As they hugged and kissed you, I realized I couldn’t remember a single Italian phrase I’d memorized, and when the introduction came, I stammered, redfaced and forlorn. But as we stood in a small circle off the tarmac, human ebb and flow around us, your father and sister were thoroughly gracious, and immediately forgiving of my shortcomings, which I felt had tripled since we left Kennedy. Rafaela, cautiously, finger on dimpled chin: “He ees a tall one.”
I remember this so clearly tonight: We left the airport in your father’s—
“Dad.”
I jumped. “Christ, Bella, you scared the shit out of me.
I grabbed at the water bottle.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You’re writing.”
I reached and shut off the monitor. It hissed and hummed as it went dark.
She took the damp towel off her head. “You were writing.”
“My diary,” I turned toward her, swiveling the chair. “For the IRS, to be safe.”
She wore a floppy t-shirt I’d given her and red sweats. “No, I’m sorry. You were editing. I was standing there a long time.”
“Bella—”
“You did something today. You feel good about it and you’re writing.”
“An interesting theory, but—”
“So that’s what’s password-protected …”
“Bella, don’t be so nosy, all right?” I said. “Sharon Knight told me to keep recor
ds in case something came back at me.”
“Is it a book? An article?”
“Go now,” I instructed. “Go watch TV. Double-check your homework.”
She smiled triumphantly as she walked away.
My heart pounding, I took a long drink of cold water, then snapped on the screen to read what I had written.
TWELVE
I got an early start and, having tossed off Bella’s clever, calculated advances—“Why don’t you write something on Automatic Slim?” “A book on Slim.” “Sure, yes.”
“A slim book.” Thwarted, she pouted: “You want to waste a gift, Dad, that’s your business.”—I came back quickly from her school and went to it: Last night, I’d gotten the call I knew would come. I needed to get ready.
I took a short shower, shaved carefully and changed the bandage under my chin. I saw that I’d have a scar when the wound healed: a daily reminder of Aubrey Brown and Montana, who had scars of his own.
Knowing I needed to, I put on a pair of navy Dockers and a blue Oxford. As I slipped on my loafers, I punched in the number of Ellard Jackson, Brown’s dispatcher. A young woman with a heavy Spanish accent answered, then passed me down the line.
“Yeah, I know who you are,” Jackson barked. “Henderson said you’d call.”
I told him what I wanted.
He asked, “You think everybody’s going to come across?”
I nodded as I brushed the dust off the shoes, phone cradled between shoulder and ear. “If you tell them it’s about Brown. It could have been one of their guys.”
He paused. Behind him, someone else was working another phone, shouting out a terse traffic report. A problem on the Bruckner. The fuckin’ Bruckner.
“All right,” he said finally, “all right.”
“I need to know if someone took a fare up to Fort Washington Avenue a week ago Friday late or early Saturday—”
“I know when Aubrey was killed, man.”
Closing Time Page 20