The Lonely Witness

by William Boyle

“Really?”

  “Really.”

  He’s got tears in his eyes. “Shit, that makes me so happy.”

  Alessandra steps in front of Amy and extends her hand. “I’m Alessandra,” she says.

  Fred shakes it. “Very nice to meet you.”

  “Alessandra’s visiting from Los Angeles,” Amy says.

  “That’s nice,” he says, then grows somber. “Listen, I hope you’re not upset about me getting this room here. I’m guessing the monsignor told you where I was. I didn’t mean for this to upset you. It’s just I thought staying local was my only shot at connecting with you. It’s not a forever thing. I was just gonna give it a week.” He stands, setting down the bag of chips on the steps. “Where are my manners? You want to come inside? There’s a water heater in my room and nowhere comfortable to sit, but I’d be happy if you came in.”

  “We can just stay out here,” Amy says.

  “Out here’s great,” Fred says. “Sit down.” He moves out of the way so they can sit on the stoop, and he just looms there before them. “You want some chips? Have some chips.”

  “Let the healing begin,” Alessandra says, clapping her hands together.

  Amy rolls her eyes at Alessandra.

  “Where do we start?” Fred says, taking the wisecrack seriously. “Well, for one, your sweet daughter has a little issue, and she needs some big help,” Alessandra says.

  Amy and Alessandra didn’t really talk about this beforehand. There’s no plan for what she will or won’t say. Amy’s nervous.

  “Yeah, absolutely,” Fred says, moving close to Amy. “I could tell something was off. Just by looking at you, I could tell. I know trouble. And I’m here to help, kid. You should’ve asked me earlier. Whatever you need.”

  “See, Amy?” Alessandra says. “I told you. He’s here to help.”

  “I don’t know,” Amy says. She feels terrible, suddenly, about pitching this idea to Fred. She feels almost evil.

  “You don’t know what?” Fred says. “I’ve never been there before. I want to be there now. I can’t do much in terms of dough, you know that, but anything else.”

  “Thing is, she had some jewelry,” Alessandra says. “Some jewelry?”

  “Yeah. That she inherited.”

  “Your grandmother’s?” Fred says to Amy.

  Amy nods.

  “And this jewelry,” Alessandra continues, “which is super precious to her, was stolen.”

  “That stinks,” Fred says.

  “Amy’s all torn up about it.”

  “What can I do? You reported this? You know who’s responsible?”

  “We know,” Amy says, almost choking on the words.

  They walk over to Seventy-Eighth Street. They stop on the corner by Magen David Yeshivah High School. Alessandra says they don’t know the exact house, but they know the guy lives on this block and that he’s got Amy’s jewelry stashed in an attic closet.

  “What’s his name again?” Alessandra asks Amy.

  “Tony Mescolotto,” Amy says. “The attic, huh?” Fred says. “Christ, no matter what, that’s up there. That means getting into the house and getting all the way to the top.”

  “It’s stupid,” Amy says. “You can’t do it.”

  Alessandra nudges her.

  “Wait a sec, kid,” Fred says. “Now, I didn’t say that. I’m just strategizing. How do we find out the address?”

  Alessandra takes out her phone and starts pecking at the screen with her thumb. She asks Amy to spell the name for her. Amy takes a stab at it.

  “I’m checking the Whitepages. Give me a sec.”

  “How’s she checking the Whitepages?” Fred says. “The Whitepages is a big clunker of a book.”

  “Welcome to the future, Pa Falconetti,” Alessandra says. “Here it is. Two-two-five-six.”

  They walk up the block on the opposite side of the street. Oak branches hang over them, darkening the sidewalk with shadows. Amy homes in on a pair of sneakers strung up from the telephone wires. The gates of 2256 are silvery, tacky, polished. The house is ordinary, yellow vinyl siding, stone steps, flowers in the window. The attic window is like a porthole. Grapevines curl around a trellis in the muddy front yard, where two statues of St. Francis and one of St. Rosalia stand. A purple Eldorado sits in the driveway under a makeshift carport. There’s a big beware of dog sign taped to the mailbox and an iron fire escape shelved on the side of the house.

  “What time is it?” Amy says.

  “Little after four,” Alessandra says.

  “Maybe they’re at the wake,” Amy says.

  “Who died?” Fred says.

  “Just some guy from the neighborhood.” Amy tries not to think about watching Vincent bleeding from the neck, his tender request for help. Call someone. Amy tries not to think about how easily life gets forgotten in human schemes.

  “We should draw up a plan,” Fred says.

  “We don’t need a plan,” Alessandra says. “Just go in. That’s Amy’s stuff. They have no right to it.”

  “Even if no one’s home, it says they have a dog.”

  “People just put those signs up to scare off intruders.”

  “What about an alarm?”

  “There’s no alarm.”

  “Your friend’s very confident,” Fred says to Amy. “I want to help. I do. But look at me. What am I gonna do, scale the fire escape, break in through the third-floor window, and hope there’re no dogs or alarms? I’ll crap my pants. My thing was booze, Amy. I was never a burglar. I think you should call the cops. I’ll go talk to them, if you want. Explain the situation. We’ll get you back what’s yours.”

  “No cops,” Alessandra says.

  “You girls hungry? Let me get you something to eat. We’ll sit and we’ll talk and we’ll make a plan. Go to the cops is my vote.”

  “Let’s just forget it,” Amy says. “It’s fine, it’s fine. I shouldn’t have asked you, Fred. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Amy remembers her conversation with Dom. If there was truly more jewelry in that attic closet, why wouldn’t Dom just go after it, instead of trying to track down what Vincent had stolen? He said he was flat-out done with his old man, but that’s a bullshit story. She can’t believe she put faith in anything he said.

  “What is it?” Alessandra says.

  “There’s probably nothing anyway,” Amy says, shaking her head.

  “What have we got to lose?”

  “I feel a little clueless here,” Fred says.

  The heavy front door of 2256 is pulled inward. Tony Mescolotto stands at the threshold in the same suit as before, same purple flower on his lapel, mopping his bald head with a red silk handkerchief. A woman appears next to him. Mrs. Mescolotto, Amy guesses, wearing a black dress and black heels. Her hair dyed tire black, her olive skin leathery. She has cat-eye sunglasses on and carries herself like she’s in charge. Monsignor Ricciardi said he knows her well—flower arrangements are her thing. Amy recognizes her from somewhere. Not church. Ricciardi said she doesn’t go. And Amy’s never seen her at the funerals and wakes she’s been to.

  “Make me this fucking late,” Mrs. Mescolotto says. “You’re lucky Nancy’s taking care of the flowers.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Tony says.

  They head down to the Eldorado. Tony opens the passenger door.

  “Dom’s meeting us there?” Mrs. Mescolotto says.

  “What he said,” Tony says.

  “He fucking better, Tone.” She gets in the car.

  Afraid Tony will look across and recognize her as he goes to push back the gate, Amy says, “Shit shit shit,” and she starts walking away down the block, her eyes on the sidewalk. Fred and Alessandra follow.

  “What’s going on?” Fred says.

  “Nothing,” Amy says. “Just walk.”

  “That’s them?”

  “Forget it.”

  Alessandra knows the score. She keeps quiet.

  �
�Maybe I should go talk to them?” Fred says, shuffling to a stop. “I can talk reason.”

  Amy tugs at his sweatshirt. “Come on.”

  Fred picks up walking again. “You sure?”

  Amy thinks they’re in the clear, far enough away from the Mescolotto house that there’s no way they’ll be spotted.

  “They’re pulling out,” Alessandra says. “Let’s go back and break in.”

  “We should just call the cops,” Fred says.

  “If there was more,” Amy says, “why wouldn’t Dom just have gone back there first? Is it worth the risk to chase a lie? He’s a liar.”

  Alessandra clenches her jaw. “You can’t know.”

  Amy wants to believe there’s nothing else. She’s not that kind of thief. Despite what she did with Dom in Mrs. Epifanio’s bedroom—under duress—she really can’t imagine sneaking into someone’s house and going through their things. She can’t imagine sending in Fred either.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alessandra says.

  “You go back, if you want.” But she hopes Alessandra will just let it go.

  “I’m not going back for nothing. We’re no good at this. I was stupid to suggest it.”

  “I’m confused,” Fred says. “Let me take you girls for some food. How about that?”

  As they make a left on Bay Parkway in front of Magen David, Fred out in front now, Amy feels guilt and anger and a rush of overwhelming sadness. Everything is regrets. Tears hot in her eyes. She can’t look at Alessandra. Amy knows Al’s slipping away. And this man, this man who is her father, what on earth’s she supposed to say to him now? She’d woken up from dreams many nights and mornings, upset by encounters with him that had never even occurred. And now this dreaded door is open. Against her will, it’s open. She doesn’t see herself in him. Her features aren’t his features. She doesn’t feel the pull of blood. She wishes he wasn’t being nice. She wishes he wasn’t sober. She wishes he’d disappear.

  Amy has never been to Chris’s, a Polish restaurant on Bay Twentieth and Eighty-Sixth Street, but she’s seen the blue awning before and she knows that Capelli’s, the funeral home where Vincent is being laid out, is catty-corner. She leads Alessandra and Fred there now, because she’s not sure what else to do and she has the desire to see—from a distance, at least—what’s going on at the wake.

  “This is on me,” Fred says, as they enter. “Pierogi. Borscht. Perfect.”

  Amy and Alessandra don’t say anything to each other, but Amy can tell they’re thinking the same things about the absurdity of their pipe dream, their lack of purpose and planning. Things don’t just happen because you want them to happen. They of all people should know that.

  As they settle down at a table by the window, Amy looks across at Capelli’s. She can see the new sign they put up, black script letters on white wood, hanging against gray brick. The El is between here and there, squatting over Eighty-Sixth Street and curving away up New Utrecht Avenue. A train pulls in, its reflection dancing in the glass. Soon enough, people descend the stairs at the Eighteenth Avenue/New Utrecht Avenue station, right in front of Capelli’s. A bus stops at a red light and blocks Amy’s view momentarily. A beer truck, with its back door half open, pulls up behind it. More people hurtle down the stairs from the El, headphones in, collars up, serious faces on. The sky is purpling over the neighborhood. It’ll be dark soon.

  The light changes. The bus and beer truck zoom away up Eighty-Sixth Street, out from under the El. Amy wonders how many people are inside Capelli’s. Diane, Monsignor Ricciardi, and who else? Vincent, of course, hands clasped on his chest in the suit she’d retrieved. Maybe Dom, if what his mother said about his planning on being there is true. Whatever’s followed Amy has followed her this far. Or whatever needs her to see it is calling to her. She feels, again, guided by something. Spooked.

  “You okay?” Alessandra asks.

  Amy can’t quite bring herself to nod. The waitress brings over three menus and fills their waters. She’s got a soft stare, the waitress. Brown hair. Sad eyes. Fred says hello and calls her by the name on her tag, Hanna. Amy takes a menu but doesn’t look at it, her eyes fixed firmly on the funeral home.

  “This is my daughter,” Fred says to the waitress, pride in his voice.

  “Okay,” Hanna the waitress says, and then she’s gone.

  “You’re hungry?” Fred says to Amy and Alessandra.

  Amy watches as the door of Capelli’s opens and Dom’s mother comes strutting out in her heels and sunglasses. She has a cigarette in one hand, a purple Bic lighter in the other. She leans against the gray brick and lights her cigarette. She exhales dramatically.

  It takes Amy a minute, Mrs. Mescolotto’s face still simply registering as familiar, before she recognizes where she knows her from—the picture. She digs around in her backpack and finds the envelope. There she is. Front and center. In a tight-fitting black shirt, her eyes showing she’s wasted, pint glass in her hand. Dom’s mother, Dom, and Vincent all in the same picture.

  “It’s her,” Amy says aloud. “That’s where I recognize her from.”

  “Who’s who?” Alessandra asks.

  “I told you about the picture at the bar, the one I found at Vincent’s. It’s Dom’s mother in the picture.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You two are losing me,” Fred says, not having noticed Mrs. Mescolotto across the street. “You know what you’re gonna order? Polish Platter looks good.”

  Amy tries to piece together what Vincent’s connection could’ve been to Mrs. Mescolotto, beyond his longtime friendship with Dom. She wonders if maybe they were having an affair. Maybe Vincent got started with her and Dom found out about it and exploded. Add the jewelry to that. Maybe Vincent wanted to split town with Mrs. Mescolotto. Let’s run away, the note on the back of the picture reads. Whatever the case, there’s a fuller story there, and Amy wonders if she’ll ever have any sense of what the truth is or if it even matters.

  The waitress comes back.

  “You know what?” Fred says. “I’m gonna order for the table. How about we get a Polish Platter, an order of pierogi, and an order of blintzes? We’ll split everything. Sound good?”

  Amy okays him, still fixated on Mrs. Mescolotto. The waitress scurries back to the kitchen.

  When Dom comes out of Capelli’s, dressed in a suit that’s very similar to Vincent’s, leans against the wall next to his mother, and motions for a puff of her cigarette, Amy’s more fascinated than surprised. Mrs. Mescolotto looks angry at her son, frustrated, like she’s about to smack the shit out of him. She refuses to pass the smoke, instead dropping it to the sidewalk and stomping it out with her heel. Dom throws his hands in the air.

  Amy’s watching all of this through the glass with no sound.

  Alessandra’s watching now, too. “That’s him?” she says.

  Amy nods.

  “Hey, that’s the same lady,” Fred says, finally noticing Amy staring at Mrs. Mescolotto across the street.

  “Right,” Amy says.

  “And the guy? Where do I know him from?”

  “He’s nobody.”

  “Another nobody, huh?”

  Dom storms back inside, leaving his mother alone out front.

  “This fucking place,” Alessandra says. “Nothing but dead ends and disappointments.”

  “The pierogi will cheer you up,” Fred says.

  Amy stands, still holding the picture of Mrs. Mescolotto in her hand, and shoves her backpack at Alessandra. “Hold this a sec.”

  “Where you going?” Alessandra says.

  “I don’t know. Across. I want to ask her something.”

  “Just let it go.”

  “What’s going on?” Fred asks.

  Amy leaves Chris’s, the door clanging behind her. The sidewalk buzzes with life. Three women in hijabs pass. An old man on his cell phone complains about his water bill. Two dudes leaning against the newspaper rack outside Duke’s Deli drink coffee from Anthora cups.

&n
bsp; Amy crosses the street to wild honking. A minivan with plastic ballooning over its side windows slams on its brakes to avoid hitting her. The driver yells in Chinese. She slips between two parked cars and stumbles over a knot of black garbage bags, trying to keep her eyes on Mrs. Mescolotto, who walks away from Capelli’s, headed to a liquor store called Liquor One on the corner of New Utrecht and Eighty-Fourth. Amy passes in front of a decrepit law office with broken blinds in the window.

  When she catches up to Mrs. Mescolotto, she’s not sure what to say.

  “I know you?” Mrs. Mescolotto says, putting her sunglasses up in her hair. She’s prettier up close. Not as hard-looking. Probably late fifties. Brown eyes. Wearing a wispy necklace, its small charm inlaid with pavé diamonds. She’s got the kind of neck that looks like it’s been kissed and choked a lot. Her lipstick is candy-apple red. She’s been crying. Her mascara has run into the dark creases of her crow’s-feet. Her breath smells like cigarettes.

  “No,” Amy says.

  “So, what’s your deal? You selling shit? Hitting me up for money?”

  “It’s about Vincent.” Amy holds up the picture.

  16

  They take refuge in Liquor One. Dusty bottles and boxes surround them. There’s the sound of another train outside. A guy sits behind the counter with a sci-fi paperback, wearing a Yankees fleece and a hat that reads BARRY BROTHERS TOWING. Mrs. Mescolotto seems desperate for a certain kind of vodka, hunting through the bottles until she finds it. Russian and expensive.

  “My fucking elbow itches,” she says. “You ever get an itch on your elbow and it’s right there on the fucking bone and you just can’t get at it?” She rubs her elbow against the edge of the shelf that the vodka’s on, rattling the bottles.

  “How’d you know Vincent?” Amy says.

  “You’re a detective or what?” Mrs. Mescolotto says.

  “I’m not a detective.”

  “What’s with the fifth degree?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just curious. I found this picture at his place.” Amy’s talking ahead of her thoughts now.

  “What were you doing at his place? You’re a friend?” Mrs. Mescolotto’s on edge, probably unnerved by Amy. She goes up to the counter and pays for her bottle with a fold of soggy bills that she plucks out of her bra.