Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

  “I wish they could see it,” Victoria said. Her tone was distant, now, thick with a familiar melancholy, a sadness she had lived with for many years.

  “What do you mean?”

  Victoria shrugged, sipped her coffee. “I wish they could see it from the inside.”

  Byrne had a feeling he knew what she was talking about. It appeared she wanted to tell him. He asked. “See what?”

  “Everything.” She took out a cigarette, paused, rolling it between her long, slender fingers. There was no smoking here. She needed the prop. “Every day I wake up, I’m in a hole, you know? A deep, black hole. If I have a really good day, I just about break even. Reach the surface. If I have a great day? I might even see a little sliver of sunlight. Smell a flower. Hear a baby’s laugh.

  “But if I have a bad day—which is most days—well, then. That’s what I wish people could see.”

  Byrne didn’t know what to say. He had flirted with bouts of depression in his life, but nothing like what Victoria had just described. He reached out, touched her hand. She looked out the window for a few moments, then continued.

  “My mother was beautiful, you know,” she said. “She still is to this day.”

  “So are you,” Byrne said.

  She looked back, frowned at him. Beneath the grimace, though, was the slightest blush. He could still bring the color to her face. That was good.

  “You’re full of shit. But I love you for it.”

  “I mean it.”

  She waved a hand at her face. “You don’t know what it’s like, Kevin.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Victoria looked at him, giving him the floor. She lived in the world of group therapy, and in it everyone told their story.

  Byrne tried to organize his thoughts. He really wasn’t prepared for this. “After I was shot, all I could think about was one thing. Not about whether I was coming back to the job. Not about whether or not I could go out on the street again. Or even if I wanted to go out on the street again. All I could think about was Colleen.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her?”

  “I just kept wondering if she was ever going to look at me the same way again. I mean, all her life, I’ve been the guy who’s looked out for her, right? This big, strong guy. Daddy. Daddy the cop. It scared me to death that she would see me so small. That she would see me diminished.

  “After I came out of my coma, she came to the hospital alone. My wife wasn’t with her. I’m lying in the bed, most of my hair is shaved off, I’m twenty pounds down, fading in and out on the painkillers. I glance up and she’s standing at the foot of my bed. I look at her face and I see it.”

  “See what?”

  Byrne shrugged, searching for the word. He soon found it. “Pity,” he said. “For the first time in her life, I saw pity in my little girl’s eyes. I mean, there was love and respect there, too. But there was a look of pity and it broke my heart. It occurred to me that, at that moment, if she was in trouble, if she needed me, I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing.” Byrne glanced over at his cane. “I’m not in much better shape today.”

  “You will come back. Better than ever.”

  “No,” Byrne said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Men like you always come back.”

  Now it was Byrne’s turn to color. He fought it. “Men like me?”

  “Yes, you are a big man, but that’s not what makes you strong. What makes you strong is inside.”

  “Yeah, well …” Byrne let the sentiment settle. He finished his coffee, realizing it was time. There was no way to sugarcoat what he had to tell her. He opened his mouth and just said it: “He’s out.”

  Victoria held his gaze for a few moments. There was no need for Byrne to qualify his statement, nor say any more. No need to identify the he.

  “Out,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  Victoria nodded, taking it in. “How?”

  “His conviction is being appealed. The DA’s office believes it may have evidence that he was framed for the murder of Marygrace Devlin.” Byrne continued, telling her what he knew, about the allegedly planted evidence. Victoria remembered Jimmy Purify well.

  She ran a hand through her hair, her hands betraying a slight shake. Within a second or two, she regained her composure. “It’s funny. I’m not really afraid of him anymore. I mean, when he attacked me, I thought I had a lot to lose. My looks, my … life, such as it was. I had nightmares about him for a long time. But now …”

  Victoria shrugged and began to spin her coffee cup in her hands. She looked exposed, vulnerable. But she was, in reality, tougher than he was. Could he walk down the street with his face segmented like hers, head held high? No. Probably not.

  “He’s going to do it again,” Byrne said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Victoria nodded.

  Byrne said: “I want to stop him.”

  Somehow, the world did not cease spinning when he said these words, the sky did not turn an ominous gray, the clouds did not split.

  Victoria knew what he was talking about. She leaned in, lowered her voice. “How?”

  “Well, I have to find him first. He’ll probably make contact with his old low-life crowd, the porno freaks and S-and-M types.” Byrne realized that this might have sounded harsh. Victoria had come from this milieu. Perhaps she felt he was judging her. Luckily, she did not.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that, Tori. That’s not why—”

  Victoria held up a hand, stopping him. “Back in Meadville, my Swedish grandmother had a saying. ‘Eggs cannot teach a hen.’ Okay? This is my world. I will help you.”

  Byrne’s Irish grandmothers had their wisdom, too. There was no arguing with it. Still seated, he reached out, took Victoria in his arms. They hugged.

  “We begin tonight,” Victoria said. “I’ll call you in an hour.”

  She slipped on her oversize sunglasses. The lenses covered a third of her face. She got up from the table, touched his cheek, and left.

  He watched her walk away—the fluid, sexy metronome of her stride. She turned and waved, blew a kiss, then disappeared down the escalator. She was still a knockout, Byrne thought. He wished for her a happiness he knew she would never find.

  He got to his feet. The pain in his legs and back were shards of fire. He had parked more than a block away, and the distance now seemed enormous. He inched his way along the length of the food court, leaning on his cane, down the escalator and across the lobby.

  Melanie Devlin. Victoria Lindstrom. Two women full of sadness and anger and fear, their once happy lives shipwrecked on the dark shoals of one monstrous man.

  Julian Matisse.

  Byrne now knew that what had begun as a mission to clear Jimmy Purify’s name had become something else.

  As he stood on the corner of Seventeenth and Chestnut, the maelstrom of a hot Philadelphia summer evening flowing around him, Byrne knew in his heart that, if he did nothing else with what was left of his life, if he found no higher purpose, he would make certain of one thing: Julian Matisse would not live to cause a single human being any more pain.

  16

  THE ITALIAN MARKET ran three blocks or so along Ninth Street in South Philly, roughly between Wharton and Fitzwater streets, and was home to some of the best Italian food in the city, probably the country. Cheese, produce, shellfish, meats, coffee, pastries, bread—for more than a hundred years, the market had been the beating heart of Philly’s large Italian American population.

  As Jessica and Sophie walked up Ninth Street, Jessica thought about the scene in Psycho. She thought of the killer entering the bathroom, throwing back the curtain, raising the knife. She thought of the young woman’s screams. She thought of the huge splatter of blood in that bathroom.

  She held Sophie’s hand a little tighter.

  They were on their way to Ralph’s,
the landmark Italian restaurant. They had dinner once a week with Jessica’s father, Peter.

  “So how was school?” Jessica asked.

  They walked in that lazy, no-place-to-be, not-a-care-in-the-world way that Jessica remembered from her childhood. Oh, to be three again.

  “Preschool,” Sophie corrected.

  “Preschool,” Jessica said.

  “I had an awfully good time,” Sophie said.

  When Jessica had joined the force, she’d spent her first year patrolling this beat. She knew every crack in the sidewalk, every chipped brick, every doorway, every sewer grate—

  “Bella ragazza!”

  —and every voice. This one could only belong to Rocco Lancione, owner of Lancione & Sons, purveyors of fine meats and poultry.

  Jessica and Sophie turned around to see Rocco standing in the doorway of his shop. He had to be in his midseventies now. He was a short, plump man with jet-black dyed hair and a blindingly white, spotlessly clean apron, courtesy of the fact that his sons and grandsons did all the work at their meat store these days. Rocco had tips missing from two fingers on his left hand. A hazard of the butcher’s trade. To this day he kept his left hand in his pocket when he was outside the store.

  “Hi, Mr. Lancione,” Jessica said. No matter how old she got, he would always be Mr. Lancione.

  With his right hand, Rocco reached behind Sophie’s ear and magically produced a piece of Ferrara torrone, the individually boxed nougat candy Jessica had grown up with. Jessica remembered many a Christmas Day when she had wrestled her cousin Angela for the last piece of Ferrara torrone. Rocco Lancione had been finding the sweet, chewy confection behind little girls’ ears for almost fifty years. He held it out in front of Sophie’s widening eyes. Sophie glanced at Jessica before taking it. That’s my girl, Jessica thought.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Jessica said.

  The candy was snatched and stashed in a blur.

  “Say thank you to Mr. Lancione.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rocco wagged a warning finger. “Wait until after your dinner to eat that, okay, sweetie?”

  Sophie nodded, clearly plotting a predinner strategy.

  “How’s your father?” Rocco asked.

  “He’s good,” Jessica said.

  “Is he happy in his retirement?”

  If you called abject misery, mind-numbing boredom and spending sixteen hours a day bitching about the crime rate happy, he was ecstatic. “He’s great. Taking it easy. We’re off to meet him for dinner.”

  “Villa di Roma?”

  “Ralph’s.”

  Rocco nodded his approval. “Give him my best.”

  “I sure will.”

  Rocco hugged Jessica. Sophie offered a cheek to be kissed. Being an Italian male, and never passing the opportunity to kiss a pretty girl, Rocco bent down and happily complied.

  What a little diva, Jessica thought.

  Where does she get it?

  PETER GIOVANNI STOOD on the Palumbo playground, impeccably turned out in cream linen slacks, a black cotton shirt, and sandals. With his ice-white hair and deep tan he could have passed for an escort working the Italian Riviera, waiting to charm some wealthy American widow.

  They headed to Ralph’s, with Sophie on point just a few feet ahead.

  “She’s getting big,” Peter said.

  Jessica looked at her daughter. She was getting bigger. Wasn’t it just yesterday she took her first wobbly steps across the living room? Wasn’t it just yesterday that her feet didn’t reach the pedals of her tricycle?

  Jessica was just about to respond when she glanced at her father. He had that wistful look he was starting to have with some regularity. Was it all retirees, or just retired cops? Jessica wondered. She asked, “What is it, Pa?”

  Peter waved a hand. “Ah. Nothing.”

  “Pa.”

  Peter Giovanni knew when he had to answer. It had been this way with his late wife, Maria. It was this way with his daughter. One day, it would be this way with Sophie. “I just … I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made, Jess.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Jessica did, but if she didn’t press the issue, it would give credence to what her father was saying. And she couldn’t do that. She didn’t believe that. “I really don’t.”

  Peter looked up and down the street, gathering his thoughts. He waved to a man leaning out of the third-floor window of a trinity row house. “You can’t make your life all about the job.”

  “It isn’t.”

  Peter Giovanni labored under the yoke of guilt that he had neglected his children when they were growing up. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. When Jessica’s mother, Maria, passed away from breast cancer at the age of thirty-one, when Jessica was only five, Peter Giovanni dedicated his life to raising his daughter and his son, Michael. Maybe he wasn’t there for every Little League game, and every dance recital, but every birthday, every Christmas, every Easter was special. All Jessica could remember were happy times growing up in the house on Catharine Street.

  “Okay,” Peter began. “How many of your friends are not on the job?”

  One, Jessica thought. Maybe two. “Plenty.”

  “Gonna make me ask you to name them?”

  “Okay, Lieutenant,” she said, surrendering to the truth. “But I like the people I work with. I like cops.”

  “Me, too,” Peter said.

  For as long as she could remember, cops had been Jessica’s extended family. From the moment her mother died, she had been cocooned in a family of blue. Her earliest memories were of a houseful of officers. She remembered well a female officer who would come over and take her shopping for school clothes. There were always patrol cars parked on the street in front of their house.

  “Look,” Peter began again. “After your mother died, I had no idea what to do. I had a young son and a younger daughter. I lived, breathed, ate, and slept the job. I missed so much of your lives.”

  “That’s not true, Dad.”

  Peter held up a hand, stopping her. “Jess. We don’t have to pretend.”

  Jessica let her father have his moment, as misguided as it was.

  “Then after Michael …” In the past fifteen or so years, that’s about as far as Peter Giovanni had ever gotten with that sentence.

  Jessica’s older brother, Michael, was killed in Kuwait in 1991. Her father shut down that day, closing his heart to any and all feelings. It wasn’t until Sophie came along that he dared to reopen.

  It wasn’t long after Michael’s death that Peter Giovanni entered a reckless phase on the job. If you’re a baker or a shoe salesman, being reckless is not the worst thing in the world. For a cop, it is the worst thing in the world. When Jessica got her gold shield, it was all the incentive Peter needed. He turned in his papers the same day.

  Peter reined in his emotions. “You’ve got, what, eight years on the job now?”

  Jessica knew that her father knew exactly how long she had been in blue. Probably to the week, day, and hour. “Yeah. About that.”

  Peter nodded. “Don’t stay too long. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “What’s too long?”

  Peter smiled. “Eight and a half years.” He took her hand in his, squeezed. They stopped walking. He looked into her eyes. “You know I’m proud of you, right?”

  “I know, Pa.”

  “I mean, you’re thirty years old and you’re working homicides. You’re working real cases. You’re making a difference in people’s lives.”

  “I hope so,” Jessica said.

  “There just comes a time when … the cases start working you.”

  Jessica knew exactly what he meant.

  “I just worry about you, honey.” Peter trailed off, the emotion once again stealing his words for the moment.

  They got their feelings in check, entered Ralph’s, got a table. They ordered their usual cavatelli with meat
sauce. They talked no more of the job or crime or the state of affairs of the City of Brotherly Love. Instead, Peter enjoyed the company of his two girls.

  When they parted company, they hugged a little longer than usual.

  17

  “WHY DO YOU want me to put it on?”

  She holds the white dress up in front of her. It is a scoop-neck white T-shirt dress, long-sleeved, flared at the hips, cut just below the knee. It took a little searching to locate one, but I finally found it at a Salvation Army thrift store in Upper Darby. The dress is inexpensive, but on her figure it will look fabulous. It is the kind of dress that was popular in the 1980s.

  Tonight it is 1987.

  “Because I think it would look good on you.”

  She turns her head and smiles slightly. Coy and demure. I hope this won’t be a problem. “You’re a kinky boy, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “I want to call you Alex.”

  She laughs. “Alex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a screen test of sorts.”

  She thinks about it for a few moments. She holds the dress up again, stares at herself in the full-length cheval glass. The idea seems to appeal to her. Finally.

  “Oh, why not?” she says. “I’m a little drunk.”

  “I’ll be right out here, Alex,” I say.

  She steps into the bathroom, sees that I have filled the tub. She shrugs, closes the door.

  Her apartment is decorated in the funky, eclectic style, a décor comprising an amalgam of mismatched sofas, tables, bookcases, prints, and rugs that were probably donated by family members, with the occasional flourish of color and individuality purchased at Pier 1 or Crate & Barrel or Pottery Barn.

  I flip through her CDs, looking for something from the 1980s. I find Celine Dion, Matchbox 20, Enrique Iglesias, Martina McBride. Nothing that really speaks to the era. Then I luck out. At the back of the drawer is a dusty boxed set of Madame Butterfly.

  I put the CD in the player, forward to “Un bel di, vedremo.” Soon the apartment is filled with longing.

  I cross the living room and ease open the bathroom door. She spins around quickly, a little surprised to see me standing there. She sees the camera in my hand, hesitates for a moment, then smiles. “I look like such a slut.” She turns to the right, then the left, smoothing the dress over her hips, striking a Cosmo cover pose.