“Do you remember that play we saw at the Public by that Cuban guy?”
“Two Sisters and a Piano,” she replied. “At the little place.”
“The Shiva, yes,” I confirmed. “What’s up?”
“The checks.”
She handed me a small batch of checks to sign.
I lifted a pen from the off-kilter cup she’d made four years ago for my 32nd birthday and started quickly scribbling my signature on the line on the front right.
“You’re not even looking at them,” she groaned.
“I trust you.” I let her keep the family checkbook. Why not?
“You know, you should be more serious about money.”
“I don’t care about money, Bella. You know that.”
“That’s not too difficult, Dad, when you’re a millionaire.”
I craned my neck to look at her. Millionaire? We tried to live on $700 a week. I’d paid off the mortgage—against advice, but who in their right mind wants to wangle and worry to save a few hundred bucks in taxes?—and put my advance aside and set up her trust. Marina’s money is Bella’s now. One day I’ll tell her, but not yet: She’s already too interested in the stuff.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
She paused, then she said, “Mrs. Maoli is upset.”
“I know.”
She gestured with her head. “What did you do?”
“What did I do?” I said, as I reached for the mouse to log off.
She pointed to the computer monitor. “I’m not going to look.”
“No?” I asked as I swung around in the chair to face her.
“I learned my lesson.”
I came home one wintry evening to find that Bella, hungry to know what was in her father’s mind, to know what had happened to her father’s spirit, had cracked the password on my Word program and read 18 months’ worth of diary entries. Not exactly diary entries: letters to her mother, often profoundly personal, certainly private. When I entered the study, her eyes were ringed in red and her nose was raw and balls of tissues were scattered on the floor. “You are heartsick,” she cried as she leapt into my arms.
That night, I read what I had written. It was all sophistry, all self-indulgence: the spouting of a man seeking sustenance, solace, counsel from the dead. A man hiding in his own misery, an act of egoism absolutely unacceptable in a father.
I believe Bella has forgiven me.
But I haven’t written to Marina since.
Why bother the stars?
“We agreed not to speak about that,” I shrugged. “Now, about Mrs. Maoli …”
“Yes …”
“You know her friend asked me to find where her daughter lived.”
She nodded.
“I found it. And when I got there Sonia Salgado was dead. Someone had killed her.” I punched my hand, I put my hand on my throat. “Strangled.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, ‘wow,’” I said. “Now Mrs. Maoli wants me to find who did it.”
She shifted.
“This is a coincidence, Bella? The mother wants the address and the next day the daughter is dead?”
“Maybe she wanted to warn her.”
“Sure. Yes.”
“Did you give her the address?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then how can she be involved?”
“I don’t know. But, Bella, one thing you’ve got to realize is that Sonia Salgado is … is not admirable. I mean, she killed an old man. I mean, really killed him. Slashed him, savagely.”
She nodded solemnly.
“You know, these people who are killed, Bella, they just don’t close their eyes and they’re dead. It’s painful, it’s degrading; and then they’re gone. And their dreams die with them.”
“I know, Dad.”
“This complicates things. I mean, just because Mrs. Maoli believes that her friend is a nice old lady doesn’t make it so. And just because the nice old lady says her daughter is innocent … What else is she going to say?”
“OK,” she said abruptly. “I got it.” Then she began to toy with the colorful array of bracelets on her forearm. “I got it. Geez, I’m trying to understand, that’s all.”
“Understand what?”
“If you said no to Mrs. M.”
“No,” I replied, “I told her I’d look into it.”
“Will you?”
“Bella …”
“Despite what she did?”
“What Sonia did … It seems to start there.”
She didn’t reply.
I said, “OK?”
She shrugged. “Dead bodies. But you’ve got to help Mrs. M.”
“I think we agree on that.”
I turned back to the checks. I’d let Bella choose the pattern: white sails on a lake, the horizon visible through pine-covered mountains.
I was searching the soapy water for the last fork from our quick dinner when the doorbell rang.
Bella yelled from upstairs. “Who is it?”
“Don’t know.” I grabbed the dish towel and cut the radio on top of the refrigerator. Sibelius’s Concerto in D Minor came to an abrupt end.
“If it’s for me, I’m here,” Bella added.
I looked into the peephole.
“It’s not for you,” I shouted, then I opened the door.
Mango made a laconic gesture and told me to come out onto Harrison.
“You can come in, Tommy,” I said.
He stepped aside so I could go down the steps.
I had the dish towel in my hands and no shoes on my feet as I went into the evening chill.
Mango’s black Town Car was running. Steam rose from the tailpipe.
He let the front of his black-leather coat hang open. The knot of his white tie was undone; now the tie made an X that was held together with a silver bar.
The concrete was cold and the street was dark. The violet streetlight on Greenwich flickered unevenly.
“You didn’t call,” he said.
“The number wasn’t hers. Dead end.”
“You tell the D.A. that?”
I didn’t bite. “No. I didn’t get a callback.”
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his long coat. “McDowell says you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Listen, Terry,” he began. He looked at his buffed shoes and he looked up at me. “You’re out now. You got me?”
“How do you figure that, Tommy?”
“I don’t see a role for you is what I’m saying.”
He was starting slow, but I knew him well enough to understand he could ramp it up fast.
“I’ve got to close my end,” I said. “I got the mother to talk to.”
“The mother’s been talked to,” he replied sharply. “And the D.A.’s been talked to, an A.D.A., and not Knight, that melanzana friend you got.”
“‘Melanzana,’ Tommy?” The word, Italian for eggplant, was a nasty pejorative for successful blacks among people like Mango. “Where’s that coming from?”
“Don’t be cute, Terry. I told you I don’t want you fuckin’ up this thing. It’s a B-and-E gone bad and I’ll close it like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“B-and-E? What did she have to steal?”
He pressed on. “Building full of ex-cons. They steal anything, these guys.”
I kept quiet.
“What do you think?” He stepped closer to me. “You and me, we play nice, Terry. Let’s leave it that way.”
I looked down at him. “Long day, Tommy?”
He started to come back at me, then he stopped. He smiled and he shook his head. “Maybe that’s it. Long day.” He chuckled. “Maybe you ain’t the only pain in the ass.”
A cab took the yellow on the broad avenue behind the cop.
He patted me on the arm. “Look, we all got responsibilities”—he nodded toward the house—“and you’re trying to find this guy Weisz. What I’m saying is maybe you keep your c
oncentration here, where it ought to be, and I’m with you.”
There was no need to ask the question. The implication was clear.
“You’re right, Tommy. Responsibilities.”
“Good, Terry.” He started toward the car. “Maybe I’ll see you at the Delphi, huh? Buy you some French toast, something.”
I left the street and was back inside before he drove off.
Buy A Well-Known Secret Now!
About the Author
Jim Fusilli is the author of eight novels and two works of nonfiction. He also served as the rock and pop music critic of the Wall Street Journal.
Among his novels are Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, Tribeca Blues, and Hard, Hard City, about New York City private investigator Terry Orr and his young daughter, Bella, who Orr is raising in the aftermath of the murder of his wife and infant son. Narrows Gate is an epic set in the first half of the twentieth century in the Italian-American community of a gritty waterfront city based on Hoboken, New Jersey, Fusilli’s birthplace.
Fusilli has published many short stories including “Chellini’s Solution,” which appeared in the 2007 edition of the Best American Mystery Stories, and “Digby, Attorney at Law,” which was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity Awards.
In 2005, Fusilli wrote Pet Sounds, his tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ classic album. Described as “an experiment in music journalism,” the book combines the rhythm and emotional weight of his fiction with the often-unorthodox observations of his music criticism for the Journal, for whom he began writing in 1983. Pet Sounds was translated to Japanese by the novelist Haruki Murakami.
Fusilli is married to the former Diane Holuk, a senior global communications consultant. They reside in New York City. For more information, visit www.jimfusilli.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by Jim Fusilli
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5386-0
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
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