“Why do men think that estrogen acts as radar? Why?”
“I don’t know, Max.” I closed the dishwasher. “Listen, I have to talk to you about something. Did Fred mention anything about the case he and Crawford are working?”
She let out a snort. “He’s been too busy looking for a fork for the last half hour. Why would he talk to me about work?”
I filled her in on the story of Jose Tomasso. “He was working on the luxury condo by Spuyten Duyvil. You know, not too far from school?”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Turns out Jose was working there as a day laborer. Can you even use illegals on a job like that?” I asked.
She snorted. “What do you think?”
I took that for a no.
She was silent for a moment. “That’s weird. Why would they use undocumented workers for that job? That’s a Leon Kraecker building.”
Max runs a cable television network and is accustomed to working with unions. I wasn’t surprised that her first thought had been the issue of illegal workers at the job site. “It’s actually a Richie Kraecker building,” I said. “I did a little snooping online this morning.”
She made a retching noise. “I thought we agreed never to say that name again?”
“Sorry. I just thought it was interesting that the whole job has been turned over to son of Kraecker. Wasn’t he trying to make a name for himself in construction, away from daddy?”
“Yep. But for such a connected guy, he was as dumb as a box of rocks. I had my fun with him but I couldn’t ever see him becoming big in construction. That’s Leon’s turf. I thought he was going to go back to Wall Street.”
I took a glass from the cabinet and poured myself some water. “Not according to what I read. It’s Richie’s building and he’s running the show, according to the Wall Street Journal.”
“OK,” she conceded. “But undocumented workers? I find it hard to believe that he would go that route. Leon prides himself on running a clean business and, in particular, on hiring union.” She put something in her mouth before asking her next question. I hardly ever see Max eat anything, yet she’s always chomping on something when we talk on the phone. “Why are you so involved in this? The guys’ll figure it out.”
I paused for a minute. Why was I so involved? I saw the Escalantes every Saturday for an hour; I liked them, talked to them, but, in all honesty, wasn’t all that close to them. “I’m not sure, Max. I just feel like the police won’t give it as much attention as they would if a Park Avenue society matron turned up dead.”
“Don’t let Crawford hear you say that,” she warned. “Remember: the police, as you call them, are my husband and that big galoot you call a boyfriend. They don’t discriminate.”
She was right and I felt ashamed for letting my mind go there. “Right. Listen, let’s have dinner this week. I’m free on Wednesday.”
“I’ll meet you at the Steak House at seven. How’s that?”
“Sounds good.” I twirled a length of phone cord around my index finger, looking out the window at the yard behind me.
I heard Fred’s muffled voice in the background. “In the linen closet! That’s where we keep extra rolls of toilet paper!” She exhaled loudly into the phone. “Hey, did Crawford ever mention a Melanie Moscowitz to you?”
I filed through the mountains of useless information in my brain. “No. Who’s she?”
“The new Bronx ME. Fred mentioned something about her and I don’t know,” she said, pausing. “It just didn’t sound kosher. He tried to sound casual about it. Like she just happened to turn up and he had no idea where she’d come from or that she’d been transferred. And you know how much Fred likes autopsies. They’re like his favorite part of the job. So they’ll be spending a lot of time together.”
I didn’t know why any of this mattered—Fred and Crawford worked with a bunch of different women and some of them were even attractive. It didn’t bother me that Crawford worked alongside some beautiful women—was it supposed to? I smoothed my hair down and considered my belly, thinking about some of the uniformed cops in his squad; I made a mental checklist and began to compare myself to each one while Max nattered on about the Bronx ME. I felt one of my ears. Were my ears getting bigger? Was that a jowl forming on my jawline? Was I getting . . .
“Are you listening?” she asked when it was clear that I had gone somewhere else. I snapped back to reality. “Anyway, I googled her but I got nothing. I hope she’s not a knockout. What happened to the old ME? You know, that guy Fred said smelled like ass?”
“Don’t know.” Didn’t care. Crawford and I have a don’t ask, don’t tell policy about his work. I couldn’t have picked the old ME out of a lineup, ass smell notwithstanding. Max wasn’t the jealous type; she’s the type that other women get jealous of. “And what do you care if she’s a knockout? It’s not like they see her every day. Or that you’re not a knockout in your own right.”
“I know,” she said. I wasn’t sure which part of my statement she was agreeing to. If I knew Max, it was the knockout part. I heard Fred rumbling in the background. “I’ve gotta go. If Fred goes to work without wearing boxers tomorrow, Lieutenant Concannon’s going to put him on desk duty.”
I had no idea what she meant by that, but that wasn’t unusual; a conversation with Max usually includes one or two non sequiturs. After she hung up, I stared at Trixie and tried to think about the case, although my mind kept wandering to Amazonian women in NYPD uniforms who could bust perps, shoot guns, and look gorgeous while doing so. . ..
My reverie was broken by the ringing phone. I looked at the caller ID and saw Kevin’s number.
“You are in such big trouble,” I said in place of a true greeting. We hadn’t spoken since the Ranger game and I knew that he was responsible for Jack’s involvement in my birthday celebration. Kevin’s got this idea that I should date Jack and then eventually, if I knew Kevin’s thought process, marry him. Although Jack is pretty handsome and I guess what you would call a “catch,” I’m into Crawford big time and nothing’s going to change that. I don’t think.
He let out a sigh. “Well, I was calling to invite you to dinner, but if you’re going to give me crap about the game, I guess you’re not available.”
My ears perked up. “No, I’m available for dinner, but just know that we’ll have to spend a few minutes with you engaged in serious mea culpas.”
“Whatever,” he said, unimpressed by my anger. “Meet me at the Garden Path in an hour.”
I looked at the clock. It was four o’clock.
“And before you say it,” he interjected, knowing me all too well, “yes, it’s the early-bird special.”
I let out a derisive snort.
“You want to hang around with priests, honey, you gotta be prepared to roll like one.”
So now Kevin was getting all hip-hop on me. What was the world coming to?
I was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but the Garden Path is casual and so is Kevin, so I decided not to change. After taking Trixie for a quick walk, I grabbed my wallet and jumped in the car.
My plan was to stop by school to pick up a book that I had left on my desk and that I needed in order to work on some papers. But about ten minutes into my twenty-minute car ride I began formulating a new plan. I drove past the exit for the restaurant, which was a few blocks from St. Thomas, and continued south on the Henry Hudson Parkway. Near the southern-most part of Riverdale, I got off the parkway before I hit the bridge that would take me into Manhattan. I snaked my way through the streets until I got as close to the river as I could and hung a left onto the street where a sign greeted me: “Welcome to the home of the future! Welcome to Riviera Pointe . . . a Kraecker development.”
Fancy. I always love when people Frenchify things by adding an e. Forevermore I would refer to this hideously appointed complex—and that was just judging by the stucco on the foundation—as Riviera Pwant. If they wanted French, I’d give them French.
I pu
lled onto a side street and parked my car, staring at the row of little houses that fronted the river, those that eventually would lose their view once Riviera Pointe was fully constructed. Houses that had stood in this location for probably close to a hundred years. Houses that sheltered old Bronx families that worked hard for their little pieces of land and space, for their panoramic views of the majestic Hudson.
These houses would drop in price once they were in the shadow of Riviera Pointe and Richie Kraecker executed his master plan of getting high rents into this working-class neighborhood, this accidental little jewel of a burg. I’m as much of a fan of free enterprise and capitalism as the next person—until it starts to affect the working class; then I turn into what Max refers to as a “leftist-commie-liberal-Sandinista.”
I realized I had been sitting there staring at the houses for almost a half hour. I was in that dreamy place between fully awake and almost falling asleep so I didn’t notice the man who had walked right up to my window. His knuckles connected with the tempered glass, and he rapped so hard that it sounded like the window was going to shatter.
I had slumped down in my seat, but I turned and noticed that he was banging on the glass with a giant Joliet College class ring. Class of ’59. Joliet’s the brother school to my school, and, yes, I had been to a party or two there during my time as a student at St. Thomas. So I was well acquainted with the design of the class rings. I turned the car on and hit the button to roll down the window. “Can I help you?”
Class of ’59 was not happy and had a bit of an axe to grind. He had on horn-rimmed glasses and what looked like a letterman’s jacket, replete with the Joliet blue and gold colors and white leather sleeves. Like the ring, it looked like he had owned it since the fifties. Based on the design, it appeared that he had lettered in wrestling. Seems Class of ’59 also had an inferiority complex; what man approaching his seventies still wears his college letterman’s jacket? “Do you live in this neighborhood?”
I tried to shake off my grogginess because this obviously wasn’t a social call. What’s the deal? Never seen a woman sleeping in her car before? “Uh, no.”
“Well, you can’t sleep in your car here.”
No kidding. “I was just leaving.”
He moved closer to me. “I’m serious. You can’t sleep in your car here.”
I saluted him, probably unwisely. “Got it, chief. No sleeping. I was just leaving.”
“Do you think this is a joke?” he asked, peering in at me in the semidarkness. He was so close that the edge of his blue and gold Joliet scarf blew in and tickled my cheek.
“No.” I sat up even straighter and attempted to put the car in drive. “Don’t think it’s a joke, don’t know what your issue is, and just want to leave.” I tried to put the window up but his hands were on the opening.
“Do you know how many people have come to this neighborhood because of this . . .” he sputtered a bit, trying to find the right word. He waved his hand in the direction of Riviera Pointe. “. . . monstrosity?”
“No idea. I’ll be going now,” I said, thinking that if he would take his other hand off the car door, I could roll up the window and leave without dismembering him.
“Hundreds. Maybe a thousand. It’s a disgrace.” He backed up a little bit and I started to roll up the window. “I’ve lived here all my life and now . . . this,” he spat out and waved again toward Riviera Pointe. “I’ll lose my view,” I heard him say as the window rolled to its closed position.
I gave him a little wave as I pulled slowly away. When I looked in my rearview mirror, he was still standing there, getting smaller and smaller as I headed down the street and away from the job site. Hopefully, he would find someone to wrestle and get rid of that excess hostility and built-up aggression that was bubbling just beneath the surface. I headed north, back toward the restaurant, to meet Kevin.
Father McManus was seated at a table for four, holding a chardonnay in his hand. He looked up when I entered, giving me a wave and a smile. His “hi!” was a little too vibrant, too enthusiastic. It wasn’t lost on me that he sucked down half of his wine and wiped a thin sheen of sweat off his upper lip as soon as I sat down.
I approached the table, noticing two busboys constructing a makeshift stage next to the kitchen door. I hooked my thumb toward them as I sat down. “What are they doing?” I was still a little off-kilter after my meeting with Joliet, class of ’59, and I expected that the answer to my question would throw me further out of whack.
“Setting up the stage for karaoke night.”
Dread started to take hold of me, in the form of icy tendrils making their way up through my muscles and grabbing hold. “What are we doing here on karaoke night?” I looked up as a waitress delivered a vodka martini with extra olives. “I didn’t order this,” I said.
A voice from behind me said, “But I did.”
I turned and looked up at Jack McManus, his white teeth glinting intermittently in the reflection of the blinking strobe light. Kevin drained the rest of his chardonnay, the last one he would ever consume if I had anything to do about it.
Six
I sat in stunned silence; nursing my martini, surrounded by McManus brothers.
Kevin had invited not only Jack but another of his four brothers, Patrick—aka PJ, one of those initial names that years of teaching taught me belonged to bad seeds. He did not disappoint. Patrick, the youngest of the McManus clan, was a driver for Budweiser, a job that seemed completely suited to his skill set and strengths. When I told him I lived in Dobbs Ferry, he recited every bar within ten miles that carried the product he transported. Twenty years ago, this information might have excited me, but now I was just bored by recitations of beer-carrying establishments and their proximity to my house.
“Have you ever been to Sadie’s?” he asked.
It was the first place I had ever shared a meal with Crawford. I nodded.
He slapped me on the shoulder. “They carry Bud there!” He got up from the table and went over to the karaoke area to pick out his song.
I thought that just about every restaurant or pub in the free world carried Bud, but he was so excited that I didn’t want to burst his bubble. I took another sip of my drink, spearing an olive and shoving it into my mouth.
Jack regarded me from across the table. “Do you do karaoke?”
I raised an eyebrow in reply. “What do you think?”
“I was hoping we could do a duet.”
I shot Kevin a look and muttered just softly enough so that nobody but him could hear me. “Je vais te tuer.” I am going to murder you.
Kevin speaks passable French and knew that this didn’t mean “I love you.” His eyes went wide behind his thick glasses. He pushed away from the table. “I think I’ll take a look at the songbook, too.”
A plate of hot wings arrived at the table, courtesy of Patrick. “Should I do ‘SexyBack’ or ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’?” he called over. He was serious.
“ ‘SexyBack,’ ” I called as I filled up my plate with wings. I looked around the restaurant, noting that almost every table had filled since I had arrived. I started cramming wings in my mouth so that I wouldn’t have to talk to Jack.
“This wasn’t my idea,” he said, looking down at the table.
I shrugged.
“I told Kevin that you’re obviously involved with someone else, but he isn’t getting the hint.” Jack took a swig from his bottle of beer. “I didn’t even know you were going to be here until a few minutes ago. We’ve had this dinner on the calendar for a week.”
“Just so you know,” I said, wiping sticky orange residue from my fingers onto my paper napkin, “if my boyfriend gets wind of this, I’m telling him you’re gay.”
Jack took another swig of beer, which apparently went down the wrong pipe. He sprayed beer into his napkin and began coughing violently.
I put a hand on his back. “And if you die from coughing, even better. Then I don’t have to endure any more of these set
ups.” I sucked the meat off of another wing, throwing the denuded bones onto my plate. There was a time I had tried to impress Jack and make him think that I was a dainty flower, but those days had passed.
His coughing subsided and he regained his composure. “I get it,” he said, hooking a thumb in Kevin’s direction. “Just make sure you tell him.”
Kevin took the stage, microphone in hand, and launched into his song: George Michael’s “Faith.” I looked at Jack. The mood broken by the ridiculousness of the situation, the two of us burst out laughing. “Good choice,” I said and took another wing. Something occurred to me as I was wiping wing sauce off my mouth. “Hey, do you know Richie Kraecker?” Richie Kraecker was a hockey fan and had been photographed at more than one game with a reed-thin model on his beefy, and extremely hairy, arm. I was sure I had seen a photo of him in one of the gossip columns just a week earlier with one such woman, a six-footer in head-to-toe spandex and hair the color and texture of an igloo.
“It’s Kray-ker,” he corrected me.
“Whatever.” I hailed the passing waitress and ordered another martini. “Extra olives!” I called after her. “Do you know him?” I asked him.
Jack didn’t know me that well—just well enough to be suspicious of why I was interested. “Yeah, I know him. He’s got a luxury box at the Garden. Why do you want to know?”
I looked at Jack, getting distracted for a moment by his Clooney looks. I realized, a moment too late, that I had been staring. “Oh. Well. I’m interested in the condo complex he’s building. You know, down by Spuyten Duyvil?”
He nodded slowly.
“What?” He knew something and I wanted to know what it was.
He considered how much he wanted to tell me. “I’ve actually got an accepted offer on one of those condos.” When he saw my face, he seemed to regret having told me.
“You mean you’re leaving Long Island City?” I said, pretending to be surprised.
Quick Study Page 5