PARK LANE SOUTH QUEENS
The Claire Breslinsky Mysteries
Mary Anne Kelly
For Tommy
CHAPTER 1
There were no stars as thick as bedbugs over Richmond Hill. There was only a moon. All you could hear were the faraway clunks of the avenue el, the spurt of the radio squad car parked halfway up Bessemer, and the dark, runny lull of the woods still alive with raccoon.
Eleven miles and ten thousand light years from Manhattan, elderly front porches throned inbred and bigboned cats who looked up nervously, then yawned with affectation when an ugly black runt-legged dog made his rounds industriously through the backyards and the tilted streets.
Dubbed by all as the Mayor, the dog patrolled the trestle tracks for female scent, investigated any unlocked garbage pails along his way, enjoyed a clandestine and cooling drink from Mrs. Dixon’s controversial Roman birdbath, and then headed north along old Park Lane South, going no farther in than the rim of the woods (there were things going on in there even he didn’t want to know about). Finally, back he waddled to his own front porch, job done, neighborhood checked, home just in time for the blue-bellied dawn climbing over the pin oak.
Claire Breslinsky, slender and still beautiful at thirty, slept soundly in the hammock on the porch. The Mayor padded over, cocked his head, and watched, deliberating whether or not to jump right up and nestle in. Claire’s hair, loosened in sleep, was dark as chestnut and the briney bitches of his youth. He sighed. That was years ago. He’d put on quite a bit of weight since then and doubtless he would wake up Claire. That wouldn’t do. Although she’d just returned to Queens from ten years overseas and he had only known her briefly as a pup, he felt a fond attachment to her. Claire’s accent didn’t bother him. He was English bulldog-blooded himself. At least a good part of him was. He liked her foreign ways. And at meals she fed him every bit of her meat beneath the table. Mother and Pop Breslinsky (or Mary and Stan, as he chose to think of them, with all due respect) said she had spent some years in India to boot. That would explain it.
Claire stirred. The first shaft of light had hit her on the face. She looked right at him with those eyes queerly bright and blue as the Lanergan’s Siberian husky.
“Ah,” her deep voice cracked, “good morning, your honor.”
The Mayor joggled his tail to and fro. He bolted directly onto her breast and slurped her broad mouth with his tongue. Claire pushed him firmly off her face but let him stay right there, her soft hand buried in the bristly fur of his fighter’s broad back. She put her leg out onto the porch railing and rocked the two of them back and forth, back and forth. There was no wind today. It would be hot.
They looked up and watched the garbage truck come lumbering up the block. Mrs. Dixon next door stretched her terry bathrobe around herself one extra time, slammed down the can lid, and waddled briskly back inside her house. No garbagemen were going to see her front without a sturdy brassiere. Of that they could be sure. Some things, Claire smiled, never changed. Then a decrepit Plymouth rattled down the broken street from Park Lane South and turned left onto Myrtle. And back they fell to sleep.
The old house was still for just a little while. Mary Breslinsky, up with the birds, was quick in and out of the shower and down to squeeze oranges, poach eggs, pop the toast in. News radio accompanied her as she went about with her transistor in one apron pocket, rosary in the other, eyes wide for any international catastrophe (Claire was finally safe at home, thank God, but still she liked to be the first to hear of any tragedy). The white braids curled around her neat head would quiver with excitement at just any break in a major criminal event. She’d clear her throat and store this or that away for announcement at the table. She was Irish, was Mary.
Before you knew it, she had the marmalades lined up like soldiers: blueberry for her husband Stan, apricot for raven-haired Carmela (her eldest and her fashion columnist), orange for Claire (her long-lost wandering photographer come home at last), grape for Zinnie (her good humoured, blond policewoman) and mint (again) for Michaelaen (Zinnie’s son and his grandma’s own miracle, just four years old and russet-haired like Claire used to be). Her husband Stan referred to them as his Clairol Group, and so they did look when you got them all together around the table.
Stan Breslinsky, hardware store proprietor (semi-retired), weapons enthusiast, and passionate lover of opera, shaved to the strains of Rigoletto. He hummed along. He took his time. He warbled and lingered until the last pretty notes of “La Donna E Mobile” came to a halt. Reverently, he put away his Sony tape recorder and descended the stairs for the kitchen. A spider as big as your thumb scooted down the bannister behind him.
Mary was at the Daily News, checking off her Wingo numbers. She played all the Zingos, Wingos, and Lottos. Each morning brought another chance to win a million. Her corner of the table by the stove was cluttered with all kinds of tickets, bingo circulars, crossword puzzles, coupons, and contests for prizes like a fun-filled trip to Atlantic City. Stan waited for her to be finished with the News and move on to the Post. Then he could have all his favorite funnies. The Times was lying there unopened (nobody read that thing but Carmela) and so was Newsday, the one they all read while waiting for the News or the Post to be free.
“Good morning, dear.” He kissed her on the cheek.
“They caught that fellow who was robbing all the 7-Elevens,” Mary said. “About time, too. He’s been busy as a widow at the fair.”
Stan reached into Mary’s apron pocket and switched the news channel of the radio over to WQXR, the classical station, then took his seat.
“Is today league day?” They bowled together on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then again with the league every Friday.
“Sure.” She looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. “You might want to put your bermudas on. News says it’s going to be a scorcher.”
“Claire’s bed is empty. She sleep out on the porch again all night?”
“Mmm.”
Stan shook his head. He sipped his juice and Mary handed him the News.
“You give it back before Carmela gets it. She’ll do the crossword out from under me.”
In marched Michaelaen, stark naked and transporting a truck in one downy arm.
“Back in your room and don’t come out without your shorts.” Mary reached for the scissors and began her coupon clipping. Michaelaen returned in a moment wearing nice plaid bathing trunks. He went out the screen door and into the yard to go check on his rabbits. Zinnie came in, her short blond curls spilling this way and that, and kissed her parents good morning, all the while busily at work with a nail file.
Mary put a glass of juice down in front of her. “No guns at the table, officer.”
Zinnie removed her pistol and stuck it on top of the refrigerator. She yawned and eyed the News in her father’s hands.
Michaelaen, satisfied that his rabbits had lived through the night (no small feat with all the raccoon about), returned and climbed onto Zinnie’s lap. She spread his green mint jelly onto a piece of white bread, folded it over, and pushed it into his little mouth. He cradled his truck and chewed.
Carmela entered crisply, her usual forboding self without her coffee, so no one greeted her yet. Neat as a pin, her black hair coiled in a knot at the nape of her neck, Carmela buried herself behind the Times. She swallowed a series of pills: lecithin, rose hips, brewer’s yeast, and silica, a round of B’s, a multi, an E, and an unscented garlic. (In the winter she included cod liver oil.) She sloshed this parade down with one long gulp of black coffee.
A sirening cop car raced down Eighty-fourth Avenue and up to the woods.
“Gee, that’s close,” said Mary. “I hate sirens.” She loved them, re
ally, but she didn’t think she should.
“Anybody got ‘Dear Abby’?” asked Zinnie.
A resounding belch from the Times alerted them that Carmela was now awake, aware, and prepared for verbal exchange. “Jesus,” she swore at a picture of a rather mannish-looking female politician. “Who the hell does this friggin upstart think she is.”
“She needs a good slam bam in the thank you, ma’am,” Zinnie agreed. “Is Claire out on the porch? What does she think, she’s still in the Himalayas? You’d better tell her, Mom. She can’t sleep out there.”
“Why not?” Carmela arched one well-plucked brow. “I’m sure she’s only levitating.”
“Better,” Stan said, “she sleeps on the porch than over there in God knows where with God knows whom.”
“Hear that?” said Zinnie. “Another siren.”
“They both seem to have stopped by the monument,” Stan lifted an ear and strained to look outside.
“It’s probably crack smokers, again,” Mary decided.
“Too early in the morning for crack smokers,” Zinnie said knowingly. “And anyway, no one wastes sirens on crack smokers.” She took a bottle of clear nail polish out of her trousers pocket and repaired a chip. “What’s Claire doing wandering around the woods by herself? Mrs. Dixon says she’s always in the woods.”
“Taking pictures,” Mary sighed. “What else?”
“Well, tell her she can’t just sashay through the woods around here anymore. This neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.”
“You tell her,” Stan said. “She listens to you.”
“I already told her not to sleep in the hammock. So where is she? Sleeping in the hammock.”
“She does have the dog out there,” Mary pointed out.
“Hah,” Carmela snorted. “A lot of good he’ll do her. He’s off half the night looking for girls.”
“He sure is,” reflected Stan with a touch of pride.
“You wouldn’t think he could still get it up at his age,” Carmela mused out loud.
“Carmela!” Mary waggled her head. “Such thoughts!”
Zinnie looked up from her manicure. “Aw, c’mon ma. We’re grown-up, divorced women.”
“Well, I’m not divorced. Neither is your father and neither is Michaelaen. Majority rules.”
“I am too divorced,” insisted Michaelean.
“Oh, yeah?” Zinnie shook him around on her lap. “Where’s ya papers, huh?”
“Claire’s not divorced, either,” Carmela added, somewhat viciously, for they all knew that Claire had been “involved” with two different men, neither of whom she’d told them much about.
“The last one was a duke, you know,” Zinnie, still impressed, reminded them.
“That and a token will get you on the subway,” Carmela said.
Zinnie helped herself to another poached egg. “A hell of a lot more interesting than that dip shit accountant you were married to.”
“At least Arnold didn’t live off my money, like hers did.”
“Right. He left you so well off. That’s why he’s got a house in Bayside and you’re back in Richmond Hill with us.”
“Arnold might be tight,” Carmela smiled, “but he never took it in the kicker.”
“Now, girls.”
“That’s ok, Mom,” Zinnie shrugged. “It wasn’t Freddy’s fault he turned out gay. And it wasn’t mine, either.”
Mary frowned. “Well, then, at least not in front of Michaelaen.”
“I don’t know why the hell not,” Zinnie buttered her English muffin. “At least when he grows up he’ll know enough to marry someone who knows what they’re there for.”
“It says here,” Stan interjected, “that they’re thinking of making the old Valencia Theatre into a landmark.”
Mary’s coffee pot suspended in midair. “I remember going there with my cousin Nancy as a girl. She took the trolley in from Brooklyn and we packed a lunch and went to the Valencia. This was the country to her, can you imagine?”
“Really, Zinnie,” Carmela snorted. “You talk as though you’d never heard of homosexuality when you married Freddy.”
“That’s just what I mean. I knew it existed in Greenwich Village, but no one ever spoke of it in normal terms. Everyone around here whispered about things like that while we were growing up. I never imagined it happened in normal people, too. What I say is, the more matter of fact you are about something, the less it can hurt you.”
Mary Breslinsky cupped her face and shook her head. “Well, if anything, this family has become more matter of fact. More coffee, Stan? Stan? Arsenic in your coffee?”
“Hmmm? Uh. Uh huh.” Stan was lost in Jimmy Breslin’s column.
“See what I mean?” She filled his cup.
“Who does this Breslin think he is?” shouted Stan. “He’s got it in for the entire NYPD!”
“Just the corrupt ones, Dad,” Carmela spoke with elaborate patience, “and there are enough of them.” Carmela had exchanged three words with Jimmy Breslin at a press party. Now she was keeper of his every motive and intention.
“No,” Stan grew agitated. “He accuses the whole force!”
“He’s practically right,” Carmela said.
“Oh, no he’s not. You’re not, Zinnie. And Michael sure as hell wasn’t.”
Mary Breslinsky didn’t look up then, because Michael was dead and had been for ten years, and it hurt just as much now as it had then. He was Claire’s twin and he had died at the hands of a young killer he’d tried to talk into surrendering. He’d looked at the thirteen-year-old, tear-stained kid huddling in the stairwell and he’d taken off his gun and walked right into the arms of death. Rookie good-hearted, valiant, stupid Michael.
The Mayor walked into the kitchen.
“I gotta go to work,” Carmela stood.
“Me too,” said Zinnie, but she didn’t move, she sat there, because she knew that if the Mayor was here, Claire was coming in, and she loved Claire, loved to look at her face. Claire had Michael’s clear blue eyes, pure as sea glass, and Zinnie hadn’t had them to look into since she was fifteen. Zinnie had thought she’d lost the both of them back then, because Claire hadn’t been able to stay home after Michael died.
“If you’re going to put on something cooler,” Mary told Stan, “you’d better get cracking.”
The Mayor, glad to see breakfast coming to such an abrupt halt—there would be that much more leftovers for the picking—jumped into Stan’s chair to oversee what Mary might unthinkingly discard. There was no sense in being wasteful. He whimpered at the sight of Carmela’s three quarters of a piece of buttered toast heading for the bin.
“What, you want that, too?” Mary looked at him skeptically. “I don’t know how you can enjoy it in all this heat. All right. Take it.” She finished up most of the dishes (Mary had a dishwasher but was rarely known to use it), left the coffee on for Claire, took her apron off irritably, and went out into the yard with Michaelaen. He’d help her water the strawberries. He was the only one who could do it without wetting the leaves.
Mary was annoyed at Stan for bringing up Michael. She knew she shouldn’t be, but she was. She didn’t want them upsetting Claire so soon after she’d come home and she might very well have been listening. That was the type she was. Michael had been the talker and she the listener. Gravy and bread. Claire had all but died herself when Michael was killed, and Mary knew inside herself what kind of suffocating pain Claire felt when she bumped into some old thing of Michael’s that they still had lying about. A picture. Or Michael’s old copies of Motor Trend that no one had seen fit to throw away. What if Claire took off again? What then? A nervous breeze unsettled the trees. Mary looked up and narrowed her eyes. The white sky glared. With any luck they’d have a thunder storm.
“Gram?” Michaelaen wrapped his hand around her thumb.
“Mmm?”
“What’s a kicker?”
Claire, in her father’s knee-length undershirt, bleary-eyed and mouth s
till parted from her dreams, came into the kitchen, tripped quietly over the vacuum cleaner, and dunked her whole face under the faucet. Was the cloth she dried off with the same as one she remembered from years ago? It smelled the same. Ivory Snow and Cheerios.
“We have bathrooms here in America for that sort of thing,” Zinnie said.
Claire turned and looked at Zinnie, all grown up and sharp as a tack. When Claire had left New York, Zinnie had still been wearing braces. Now here she was: married, a mother, divorced. There and back and no scars on the outside to show for it. But then Zinnie had been the kind of kid who would take a tumble off her bike and laugh out loud. Hard. Zinnie used to tag along with Claire and Michael all the time back then. She’d been their favorite. Claire suddenly felt too old for so early in the morning. She poured a cereal bowl half up with coffee and the other half with milk. Then she lit a cigarette.
Zinnie watched the cool blue smoke surround Claire’s tousled head. “Whadda ya takin’ pictures in the woods for?”
“Oh. It’s the people.”
“What people?”
“The old people who promenade up there. Half the survivors of Dachau and Auschwitz seem to be living right up here in the apartments at the end of Park Lane South.”
“And you like that, eh?”
“I like them,” Claire admitted, enjoying her coffee. No one who’d lived in India could ever take a luxurious cup of well-brewed coffee for granted. “They fascinate me because they survived what was impossible. They’re very sad and matter of fact and somehow not bitter at all. Numbers tattooed on their arms as though they were cattle. They have faces that shrug.”
“So you photograph them.”
“Well, I’m starting to. They’re opening up a little more now that they think I understand Yiddish.”
“Now you speak Yiddish. My sister the Jew.”
“I don’t understand it, really. But it’s not too different from Schweitze-Deutsch—Swiss-German. Between High German and Swiss, you can pretty much understand.”
“High German, Low German—it’s all Greek to me.”
Park Lane South, Queens Page 1