“That was Carmella, wasn’t it?” Pam had asked, her anger still evident as we both watched my ex-wife and ex-business partner disappear around the corner.
“You’ve seen her picture before, yeah.”
“God, she is beautiful. What was she doing here?”
“She heard about the party and she wanted to congratulate me and wish Sarah all the best.” Lie number one. As easy to tell as breathing. “She knew Sarah from the time she was a little girl and they always liked each other.”
Pam was professionally skeptical. It came with the territory. She was a PI, a real PI, not a PI like me, a guy who more played at it when owning wine shops with his brother got too boring to bear. Pam was licensed in Vermont and operated out of an office in Brattleboro. Brattleboro suited her. The rent was relatively inexpensive and its location gave her easy access to most of New England and New York. She did the majority of her work in New England, but, if the money was right, took cases as far south as Jersey. We met while I was looking for Sashi Bluntstone and the story of how we wound up together is pretty complicated. Let’s just say that since our initial relationship was based on secrets and lies-hers, not mine-I was a total sucker for her. Kindred spirits, you know. It helped that she saved me from being beaten to death by a vengeful ex-cop.
We’d been together for about two years now, if you could call the cha-cha we did being together. We’d both been down the aisle before and neither of us was hankering to take that stroll again. It was one thing for Sarah to sell her vet practice down here and move up to Vermont with Paul. They were young and just starting out. But Pam and I were set in our ways and weren’t going to pull up roots and relocate so we might live unhappily ever after. We had what I suppose you might call an adult relationship. One weekend a month I’d visit her. One weekend a month she’d come down to Brooklyn. Twice a year we’d go on week-long trips together. We enjoyed each other’s company and more than satisfied each other’s needs while managing to avoid the minefield of married sex. I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but married sex was sort of a peculiar mix of comfort and resentment. Between Sarah’s wedding and my ticking clock, I imagined I’d be thinking about a lot of things I’d let slide until now.
Pam, as unconvinced by my lie as I had been by her smile, was already headed back home. She was working an insurance fraud case that she thought would keep her busy for the next couple of weeks. I had a case to work too, probably my last case, my last chance for redemption. As atheists go, I guess I was a dreadful disappointment. I unfolded the paper Carmella had given to me that morning and punched in her phone number.
FOUR
We met on the boardwalk in Coney Island near Nathan’s. The sun was strong. The wind stronger and fragrant too. It smelled of salt from the sea, of sunscreen lotion, and of hot oil. It smelled so intensely of hot dogs and French fries that I imagined I could hear them sizzle and bubble.
“Why meet here?” I asked, turning to face the beach.
“I used to work the Six-O too, remember?”
“Yeah, but it’s also the place where-”
“-that scumbag took me from my family and raped me when I was a little girl. You know, when I first found out this was where the department was assigning me after making detective, I almost said no, but you know how the job was back then. I wouldn’t get no second chance. They woulda stuck me behind a desk at One PP and made me a fucking showpiece. When the department wanted to prove women and minorities were getting ahead, they’d have wheeled out the hot piece of Puerto Rican ass and her shiny gold shield for the press. And when they were done making their point, they’d have put me back on the shelf until the next time they needed to flash my shield and pussy for the cameras. No, Moe, that man who did those things to me when I was a girl, he took too much from me. I wasn’t gonna let him take my career away from me too.”
“Still…”
“I like it here because it reminds me of the best of us. I loved you everywhere, but I loved you here most of all, in this place. Coney Island is your place, Moe. When you die, they should just bury you right here, under the boardwalk.”
I bit my lip and nodded, my palm pressing against my abdomen.
“Was that your girlfriend yesterday, the one who was staring at me?”
“Girlfriend? At my age, it seems like such a silly word, doesn’t it?”
“You got a better one?”
“I guess not. Pam’s her name.”
“She’s very pretty,” Carmella said.
“She said something similar about you, but that’s not why we’re here, right? I checked into Alta’s murder.”
“So you know about the other thing.”
“About her and her partner not treating Tillman? Yeah, I know what you can know from the internet, which isn’t much. Do you think the two things are connected?”
“You know I do. Any good detective can do simple math,” she said. “Alta became a target the second those stories about Tillman’s death surfaced.”
“What do the cops think?”
“I don’t know what they think. Nobody’s talking.”
“Not even to you?”
“Not even to me.”
I was surprised at that. As a rule, cops are a chatty bunch, especially with other cops. Put a few beers and some Jameson in them and the yak factor goes way up. Add Carmella’s obvious charms to that mix and the chat factor grows exponentially. While Carmella hadn’t exactly been Miss Popularity with the brass, she did have a good rep with her peers-some of whom were still on the job in high places. And she’d taken a bullet in the line of duty, which earned her a lot of respect even from the hardass old-timers who still thought a woman’s place was in the kitchen or the bedroom and who thought a Puerto Rican’s place was in San Juan.
“Why do you think lips are so tight?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what’s so frustrating, Moe. It’s like they just want all of it to go away. And it’s not only the cops. The fire department, they won’t even return my calls because I’m not listed as a relative. Shit, I can’t even get the media sources I used to have to talk to me. Something’s not right.”
“Sorry, but what do you think I can do for you? I’m pretty much outta the game, Carm. I-”
“You called me Carm.” Her smile was full and white, but the grief and guilt over her long-estranged sister weren’t far beneath the surface. “It’s good to hear you call me that again.”
“Doesn’t change anything.”
“In terms of us or the case?”
“Both,” I said, disappearing her smile. “Look, I’ve got Sarah’s wedding in a few weeks and I’ve got a lot going on right now, a lot of aggravation.”
“You do look kinda pale and too thin. Is everything okay?”
You mean other than the cancer? “Just stress. You know how Aaron can be about the wine stores. The bad economy is hurting.”
“Give it a week, Moe, please. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“Don’t be stupid, Carm. I don’t want your money, but like I said, I’m outta this, pretty much. I haven’t even been able to find my license for going on three years now. What can I do that you can’t?”
“I was a good detective and a better PI, but you are lucky. You’ve always been lucky.”
I heard someone laughing and it took a second to realize it was me. “That’s rich.”
“Please… for me, for old times’ sake.”
“You know, Larry McDonald said that same thing about old times’ sake to me once almost on this very spot a few days before he killed himself. I turned him down.”
“As close as you and Chief McDonald were, you never shared with him what we shared, what we will always share. That kind of history don’t go away, Moe, never.”
“Okay, Carm, I’ll look around, but I’m not gonna sugarcoat anything. If I find stuff out that the cops or the FDNY don’t know, like maybe that Alta really did turn her back on the Tillman guy a
s he was dying, I won’t keep it to myself. True, we have history and maybe I owe you, but I don’t owe you that.” I handed her my card. “Fax me everything you have so far to that number and I’ll see what I can see.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped toward me, arms extended, and the temperature rose. Maybe it was just my temperature. It was an innocent gesture, a hug to cement the deal, but there was no such thing as an innocent gesture between Carmella and me. That was the thing with us, the chemistry. When we were partners in Prager amp; Melendez Investigations, Inc., we managed to keep it at bay. Once we crossed the line, going back wasn’t an option. For years, I hated her for moving up to Toronto with Israel, for pulling the rug out from under me the way she had so soon after Katy’s murder. It was especially painful because Sarah, who held me responsible for her mother’s death, had stopped speaking to me. But now I saw that Carmella was probably right to move far away when we began falling apart. Between the hurt and chemistry we would have eaten each other alive and Israel would have paid the price. I stepped back.
“No, Carm, this is business. We were never very good at mixing up our history with our business… and there’s Pam.”
She let her arms down and put her back against the boardwalk rail so that she faced Nathan’s and away from me. “You are right, Moe. I will go fax you those things.”
Carmella took a few strides away without looking back. Then I called to her.
“Who told you about Sarah’s party yesterday?”
“Your sister,” she said without hesitation and without turning to face me.
“Always the troublemaker, my little sister.”
“Don’t be mad at her. You have always been her hero.”
“I’m nobody’s hero.”
“About that, you could not be more wrong.”
I watched Carmella go down the steps onto Stillwell Avenue and disappear into the crowd. I didn’t linger too long after that. I had a case to work and the rest of my life, however much of it was left, to live.
FIVE
The package Carmella faxed me was chock full of facts and details, accusations and innuendos. After studying it, I realized she wasn’t exactly telling me the whole truth about her lack of headway in Alta’s case. She’d managed to get the ME’s autopsy reports on Tillman and on Alta. She’d gotten witness statements from both the High Line Bistro where Tillman had died and from the Grotto where Alta was murdered. She had even obtained still shots of security camera footage-not terribly revealing out of context-from both locales. People were talking more than she let on, just not a lot, and none of what they had to say did much to enhance Alta Conseco’s reputation.
As I got in my car, I couldn’t help but think about why Carmella had really come to me after so many years and in spite of the rough time we’d had together as husband and wife. By moving up to Toronto, Carm had cut a huge chunk out of my life. She had been my business partner, my friend, and, eventually, my lover and wife. And then there was Israel. In the blink of an eye, she had given me a son and then just as quickly taken him away. There are few emotional investments a man can make in his life like the one he makes in a new son, whether that son carries his DNA or not. Israel had been the kind of gift few men receive at that stage in life. It’s a funny thing about men; they can love their daughters beyond all reason-believe me, I know-but without a son there’s a kind of a hole. It’s not reasonable or fair or even right, but there it is. I think it has less to do with passing on the family name than with wanting to set things right, to repair the damage between a man’s father and himself. Carmella had to know how much wrenching Israel out of my life had hurt. Still, she had come to me.
Was I lucky like she claimed I was? I guess so. Carmella knew that better than anyone. I can’t explain it, but I had the habit of stumbling into solutions when the cops and/or other PIs were stumped and things had gotten desperate. Desperation was always the door through which I came because I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing. I’d never had any formal training. My days as a cop were spent in uniform. Unlike Carm and most of my old buddies from the Six-O, I’d never gotten my gold shield. I’d earned it, just never got it. There was a time when getting that shield mattered more to me than anyone or anything. Not having it ate at me. It bothered me so that when the devil came to me in his many shapes and guises over the course of years, I’d been tempted to take the bargain. Tempted, but never taken. Now that I had the devil inside me, literally eating away at me, I couldn’t believe a hunk of gold metal and blue enamel ever mattered to me in the least.
Lucky or not, I was never the detective Carmella was. The fact that she had gotten as much information as she had, although no one seemed in a very cooperative frame of mind, proved my point. No, something else was going on here. Something I just couldn’t see, at least not yet. I had to be conscious of that. It’s not always the things in your mirrors coming up fast that are the biggest threats, but the things in your blind spots. I’d add it to the list of things to watch out for.
Humans are connectors by nature. It’s how our brains work. It’s how we learn, I think. We see things that happen, judge their proximity, and connect them. And in linking things or incidents together, we can’t help but see them sequentially, in terms of cause and effect. But humans are funny creatures because once we link things, once we put the cause and effect stamp on them, it’s very difficult for us to undo that link. And even if you hadn’t read the witness statements or seen the media reports, you might have connected Robert Tillman’s death to Alta Conseco’s murder. So it was easy to see why Carmella thought they were connected: Tillman is ignored and dies- cause — and Alta is murdered shortly thereafter- effect.
Problem is, humans sometimes put the cause and effect stamp on things that are completely unrelated. I had a psych professor in college who used the example of a little boy tapping a light pole with a stick. One time the kid taps the streetlamp and just as the stick makes contact with the pole, all the lights in the city go out. Mightn’t the kid or someone watching the kid link the two things together and attribute the blackout to the boy’s tapping the streetlight? They might, but they’d be wrong, dead wrong. The same danger existed here. I had to be careful not to fall into the trap that had already snared Carmella. I had to work backwards from Alta’s murder, not forward from Tillman’s death.
SIX
Located just past Shell Road where 86th Street breaks off at an angle from Avenue X, the Gelato Grotto was a Brooklyn institution, a place that was already there when I was born and would be there after I was dead-the odds on that having just recently improved. I’d eaten at the Grotto a hundred times over the years with friends, my brother and sister, high school dates, but not because I liked the pizza. The regular pizza never failed to disappoint. Their Sicilian was better, but nothing to get excited about. I was partial to Totonno’s in Coney Island or Di Fara’s on Avenue J. Still, it was Brooklyn pizza and, like Ferguson May, the late philosopher of the 60th Precinct, used to say, “Sex and Brooklyn pizza got a lot in common. Even when they’re bad, they’re good.”
For me, I kept going back because of the gelato. The Grotto was the first Italian eatery of any kind I could remember that sold homemade gelato. I’m talking the early ’60s here, when most Americans thought Spam kebobs with pineapple chunks and green bean casseroles were gourmet food and everyone called pasta spaghetti. No matter how disappointed I was by their pizza, the gelato was compensation enough. Another thing that set the Grotto apart was how it looked. Unlike the usual cramped Brooklyn pizzeria, the Grotto was an al fresco affair with plastic trees and plastic vines and outdoor tables with colored umbrellas on a concrete patio surrounded by curved stucco walls. It was kind of goofy and felt as much like a secluded grotto as falling down stairs felt like skydiving, but it was just so Brooklyn.
Sadly, Alta Conseco wasn’t the first person to take her last gasping breaths within the stucco confines of the Grotto. The place had a history of violence stretchi
ng back many decades. I guess what made the place so popular also contributed to the violence. Whereas most pizza places are strictly local neighborhood affairs, the Grotto drew crowds from all over the borough. It was located close to the Marlboro Housing Projects and the rail yards. You had a lot of people mixing-Jews, Italians, Irish, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis, Mafia-types, bikers, cops-who didn’t necessarily want to hold hands and sing campfire songs together. You add a little alcohol to that mix on a sweltering summer night and watch out.
I didn’t figure to barge in, flash my old cop badge, and get the information I was looking for. The days when I could use my badge and have people think I was still on the job had long since come and gone. The only thing I could flash with any credibility these days was my AARP card. But sometimes you don’t have to improvise a strategy. You just have to get lucky, and I did.
In 1977, the year I fucked up my knee and got put out to pasture by the NYPD, Nick Roussis was in his second year at the Six-O. Nick was a good guy, but the job wasn’t for him. He quit to go into the family business. The Roussis family owned several ethnic restaurants throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. We’d run into each other over the years and Carmella and I had done a job for him, flushing out a guy in the main office whom the family suspected of embezzling funds. That was in the mid-’90s and I hadn’t seen him since, but there he was-a few pounds heavier, hair thinner and grayer-chewing out the guy behind the clam bar at the Grotto.
“Tony, how many fuckin’ times I gotta tell ya, wiggle the knife to open a slit and then cut around the clam? You don’t do that, ya gonna slice t’rough yer freakin’ palm. Okay?”
I waited for Nick to walk away from the raw bar before approaching him. He saw me coming and I saw the recognition in his eyes.
I held out my hand to him for a shake, but he used it to pull me close and hug the breath out of me. When he was done with that, he playfully shoved me aside.
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