She twisted around and fell heavily into her seat. “Just trying to make conversation.” She contented herself with fiddling with my radio, making sure I would have to reprogram the tuner when I got back home if I ever wanted to listen to my stations again. She settled on the disco station and we endured an extended mix of “Love Machine,” which seemed to go on forever.
“Will she be back tonight?” I asked after the song ended and we were treated to a more subdued selection.
Frankie grunted. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw him cross his arms tightly across his chest.
“I take it that’s a yes?” Max said. “What is with teenage boys?” she asked, as if he weren’t in the car or had no faculties whatsoever.
I swatted her again. “Enough.” I changed the subject and asked her about her dinner with Morag.
She stuck her finger down her throat to indicate her displeasure. “Ugh. She’s such a bore.”
I slowed to a stop at a red light. “How so?”
“All she talks about is Richie, Richie, Richie. I really think the only reason she wanted to have dinner with me was to make sure that I was over Richie.” She snorted. “Over Richie? Has she seen the man—capital M-A-N—who I’m married to? Why would I be interested in that troll Richie when I’ve got grade A, one-hundred-percent man-meat?”
I decided not to remind her that she was mad at said man-meat. I snuck a look in the rearview mirror; it looked like Frankie was trying to hang himself with the collar of his T-shirt, which was wound tightly around his index finger.
“And guess who picked up the tab?” she asked, answering before I had a chance to utter a word. “Me! Didn’t she invite me to dinner?”
I agreed that this was in extremely bad taste, which seemed to appease her. “Was the food at least OK?”
“Oh, she took me to some Swiss place that reminded her of home. You would have loved it. It was cheese, cheese, and more cheese. Want some cheese with your cheese soup? How about our famous cheese martini? And here’s our delicious cheese bread. And now,” she said, throwing her arms out wide, “we will bring you our fabulous dessert cheese plate!” She gagged just thinking about it. “It was disgusting. No offense to your countrymen or whatever you call them. . . .”
“I think they’re called my relatives. . . .”
“Whatever. But enough with the cheese. I’ll be stopped up for a week after last night.”
Frankie let out a little groan and I checked the rearview to make sure he wasn’t hanging from the coat hook above the door.
“And she couldn’t stop talking about how much money Richie stands to make at Riviera Pointe. That broad is obsessed with the almighty dollar.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s why she’s so cheap. Probably got her First Communion money stuffed in her mattress.”
We headed north on Route 9 and arrived at the church punctually about fifteen minutes later. We walked in the back door of the building and straight into the kitchen, where our nasal passages were assaulted with the smell of frying garlic. A troupe of large men—the “cooking firemen” that Rebecca and Kerry had mentioned to me once before—stood in conference in front of the commercial stove. Their attention was taken up with a giant vat of bubbling red sauce that looked like it was one good bubble away from exploding all over the ceiling.
I cleared my throat to get their attention. They turned in unison and regarded the three of us—a tall, unkempt woman; her spritely, sexy counterpart in an ill-fitting cardigan; and a sullen teenager with a red ring around his neck and a stretched-out T-shirt collar.
“Can we help you?” the biggest of them asked.
“I’m Alison. This is Max,” I said, pointing to Max, who pirouetted in greeting. “And this is Frankie. We’re your serving team.”
The big one walked over and laughed heartily. “I’m Marian,” he said, extending his hand.
“Well, you’d better be that big if you’re gonna have a girl name,” Max whispered under her breath.
“Oh, yes, Marian. We spoke on the phone,” I said. Marian was the guy who had hooked me up with the program and I was forever in his debt. My community service hours were just whizzing by, thanks to Marian. I threw an elbow into Max’s ribs and told Marian and his cooking team that we would commence setting up so that we would be ready for the guests when they arrived.
Max, as I suspected, was useless when it came to hauling out the tables, so Frankie and I humped eight tables out of the storage area and set them up, giving Max the job of putting out the paper plates and plastic wear. When five o’clock rolled around and the first guests appeared at the front door, we were in good shape, despite Max’s propensity for losing focus.
Mrs. Dwyer arrived with Patty and took her usual spot at the front table. She greeted me without my identifying myself, which gave me pause. I wondered aloud how she did that. “You always smell like honeysuckle, dear,” she said sweetly.
Instead of taking the compliment and leaving it at that, I had to ask. “I do?” I didn’t wear perfume to the Lord’s Bounty and honeysuckle is a pretty specific scent.
She looked at me, unseeing, for a few seconds and then came clean. “Well, no.”
I waited for her explanation.
“You have very heavy footfalls, dear. I can always tell when you’re coming my way.” She half-smiled, a little chagrined at her brutal honesty. “The young man you bring with you is much lighter on his feet than you are.”
Patty looked at me and yawned.
I didn’t quite know how to respond, so I told her that I would go get her salad. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Max settle in at the Sing Sing table and begin to hold court. Before I went back to the kitchen, I went over and pulled her up by the droopy cardigan.
“Hi, Joey,” I said, nodding at the other guys at the table, including Tiny. There were six other men of varying ages and races, none of whose names I knew, all carefully staring down at their plates and not at Max, the human equivalent of a solar eclipse after you’ve been in the slammer for as long as some of them.
He held out a calloused hand. “Hi, Alison.”
“I see you’ve met Max.”
He nodded. “I have. She says that you’re best friends.”
“Since college.” I looked around the room and saw that we had a full house—close to fifty. There was not an Escalante—or any of the people they usually attended with—in sight. Kerry and Rebecca had told me that the firemen usually cooked for a hundred or more despite the fact that the program hadn’t had that many guests in over ten years, so I was sure that we would have enough food. I looked toward the door by the kitchen and saw Frankie balancing six plates of salad on his skinny arms, making his way gingerly toward the table closest to the front of the room; we were the only three servers tonight so Max and I needed to get into gear before the kid wore himself out. I pushed Max toward the kitchen. “Go help Frankie, Max. It’s salad time.”
Joey stood and I could see that he was wearing a clean and pressed oxford shirt over khaki pants; a soft, buttery-looking leather jacket hung on his thin frame. Rather formal attire for the Lord’s Bounty. “May I say grace tonight?” he asked. He was serious today; our usual banter was nonexistent and the guys he ate with were a somber bunch.
“Of course you can,” I said and gestured toward the front of the room. I walked ahead of him and called the room to attention. “Attention, please. Joey would like to lead us in prayer.”
Joey draped his jacket over the back of his chair and approached the front of the room. He cleared his throat and folded his hands. “Dear Lord, thank you for this food and for Alison, Max, Frankie, and all the other people who made this meal possible. Forgive us our sins.” He shuffled slightly and looked up at the beamed ceiling and the rotating fans that hung from the peak of the arch. “Bless our brother, Jose, and welcome him into your heavenly home.”
I hadn’t realized that Joey knew Jose and was surprised at his prayer. I had been there the week before and had led the group in grace, basically aski
ng for the same blessings for Jose and his family. Joey seemed moved and continued with his benediction.
“We don’t know why things happen, Lord. We don’t know why people do bad things. But we know that you are forgiving. And that we will be forgiven.” He took his eyes from the ceiling and regarded the other diners, who either had their heads bowed in prayer or were looking back at him, not sure what to make of this downer of a grace. “Forgive us,” he said again before closing with, “amen.”
“Amen!” Max called out before returning to the kitchen to pick up more salads.
“Thank you, Joey,” I said and watched him shuffle back to his seat. One of the other guys at the table clapped him on the back. Joey looked down at the salad in front of him but didn’t eat any of it.
What the heck had he been talking about? And why was he so emotional? Was he that close to Jose? That was the weirdest grace I had ever heard. I stood in between the two rows of tables, lost in thought. When I heard Max’s cackle coming from behind me, I snapped to again, but not before I realized I had been staring at Joey the entire time. And he had been holding my gaze. I looked away quickly, not entirely comfortable with the grim set to his mouth or the serious expression in his eyes.
Even though Max turned out not to be any help at all—and sort of a hindrance, if I had to be completely honest—Frankie and I managed to get everyone served in record time. While the group was eating, we took a seat on the steps at the front of the room that led up to the storage area. I knew better than to try to engage him in conversation, so I was surprised when he started talking to me.
“Is that cop your boyfriend?”
I looked behind me to see whom he was talking to, shocked that he had actually asked me a question. “Uh, Crawford?”
“Yeah. The big guy.”
“Sure. I guess you could call him that.”
He shrugged, pulling at the neckline of his T-shirt again. “I wasn’t sure what old people called each other when they were going out.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I feel kind of funny calling him my boyfriend, but that’s the best description.”
“Friend with benefits?” he suggested, smiling a little bit.
“Probably not,” I said. “I think that’s something you kids say, but I’m a bit old for that.”
He stared out at the room, his hands hanging down between his legs. We were sitting so close to the ground that his knees came up almost to his chin. “Where’s Amalia?”
“I don’t know.” I shifted to get comfortable. “Have you talked to her?” I wasn’t sure how close the two of them were, but the fact that he asked about her made me think that they had some kind of relationship.
“A couple of days ago. She’s worried about her dad.” He looked at me and I could tell he was worried, too. “I hope he’s OK.”
I felt bad being part of the subterfuge that was keeping Hernan away from his family, but I also knew it was the only thing that was keeping him safe. And alive. If he had to live in a convent for a few days, and he believed he did to keep his family safe, and they had to think that he was still missing, then so be it. I had to respect his wishes, even if I didn’t completely agree with them. “I bet this will all work out,” I said. I could tell that he wanted to believe me but that he was dubious. I grabbed his hand and gave it a little squeeze. “Trust me.”
He extricated his hand from mine and got up, going into the kitchen, I guess to get another shot of testosterone from the firemen. A few minutes later, he returned, his arms laden with plates of cookies.
I stood and peered out into the crowd, looking for Max. She was back at the convict table, laughing uproariously at something that one of the guys had said. I strode over to the table and gave the arm of her sweater a little tug. “Dessert time.”
“I’ll be back,” she said and jumped up. We walked together to the kitchen. “This is hard work.” She let out a breath that suggested she was exerting herself.
“How would you know?” I leaned into the takeout window and grabbed a bunch of dessert plates, a mixture of homemade and store-bought cookies on each. “All you’ve done is talk to the guys.”
“And help serve salad!” she protested. She picked up one plate of cookies and sashayed back into the dining room, dropping it off at the first table and giving me a fake smile as I walked past her.
The rest of the service went smoothly and Frankie and I were breaking down the tables a full fifteen minutes before we normally would. Everyone seemed anxious to have their meal and leave and the firemen were more than happy to oblige. Preseason baseball had started and the firehouse had a satellite dish; once they were cleaned up, they were mostly out the door. Marian stayed behind and came into the dining room to see how Frankie and I were doing. Max lounged on the steps regarding the state of her French manicure.
“We’re almost done, Marian,” I said. “Get going.”
He considered objecting for a moment but the siren song of the firehouse, the satellite dish, and hot wings got the best of him. “The door locks behind you. So just let yourselves out through the kitchen.”
I gave him a little salute. “Will do.”
Max got up and stretched. “I need the ladies’.”
Marian was on his way out. “The restroom?” he asked. “Right this way.”
She followed him out of the dining room and down the hall. Frankie put the last metal folding chair in the holder and turned to me. “I think we’re done.”
“I think you’re right,” I said and began to turn off the lights. I heard the kitchen door slam as Marian left.
Max returned from the restroom and met us in the darkened hallway, tightening the belt of the cardigan sweater around her waist. “Ready?”
We exited the back door and heard the lock click behind us just as Marian said it would. We walked down the little alleyway to the parking lot, our trek illuminated by one spotlight attached to the top of the doorjamb. Max filled me in on her conversation with the guys from the halfway house.
“So, Tiny? He totally got the runaround. He spent twelve years in Sing Sing for knifing his girlfriend, which he didn’t do. Do you believe that?”
I was only half listening, my attention taken up with finding my keys in the bottom of my bag. It wasn’t the first time I had heard the story of Tiny’s unjust incarceration. “Sure.”
“And then Joey? He was a master forger, but he got totally railroaded, too.”
My fingers met the metal of my keys, down deep in my pocketbook. “What?” I said, stopping in midstride.
“Joey. Got railroaded.”
We ascended the steps to the parking lot and were a few feet from my car. “No. What did he do?”
“Tiny told me the whole story. Joey calls himself a master forger. I didn’t realize that they had degrees in that line of work. I thought either you were a forger or you weren’t. I didn’t realize that you could achieve master status.” She skipped across the parking lot and jumped onto the trunk of my car. “He did, like, social security cards, passports . . . stuff like that.”
God. Sometimes she is really, really dense. A master forger? What did she think? He went to SUNY and got an advanced degree? I stopped searching for my keys and flashed on Jose’s face. And the list that Hernan had given me. Frankie went around to the passenger’s side and waited patiently while I stood in the middle of the lot, thinking about what she had just said.
Something clicked in my brain and all of a sudden, everything made sense. My fingers searched for my cell phone but my bag was so big and filled with so much stuff that I couldn’t find it. “I have to call Crawford, Max. I think I know what happened to Jose.” I dug deeper into my bag, rummaging around for the phone but still coming up short.
She looked at me blankly.
“Green cards, Max. Forgery. Jose and Joey were forging green cards and selling them to the guys at Kraecker’s job site.” I thought about the list that Hernan had given me; they weren’t building inspectors, they were
workers. Workers who needed to look legal.
“Ohh,” she said slowly, the lights coming on. She looked at Frankie. “You see why we’re friends? She’s as sharp as they come.”
Frankie grunted something and I couldn’t tell if it was complimentary or not. He didn’t seem quite as astounded as Max at my intellectual prowess.
“Max, is Fred working tonight, too?” I asked. “Max?”
Max didn’t answer. And the look on Frankie’s face, coupled with Max’s alarmed visage, made me stop. She slid off the trunk and stopped.
I didn’t have to turn around to know that we were in trouble.
Twenty-Nine
One thing I’ll say for Max: she may be the fastest runner I’ve ever seen.
When she realized that Joey and Tiny were in the shadows just waiting for us to exit the church kitchen, she took off down the parking lot, a blur in black leggings and a lumpy cardigan.
“Tiny! Go get her!” Joey yelled to Tiny, who at close to three hundred pounds, had a better chance of catching the flu than the flash that was Max.
I looked at Frankie, his hand still on the car door, his face paler than usual. I mouthed “stay calm” to him and he gave me a little nod. This wasn’t the first time we had been in trouble together and he had made it out alive before; I hoped he trusted me to get him out of this situation.
Joey came into view and I could see that he looked chagrined. “I’m sorry, Alison.”
Sorry for what I didn’t know. But if he was apologizing for something he was about to do, I started to feel the first tingle of fear nibbling at my extremities. “Why, Joey?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry for all this,” he said, unfolding his arms and spreading them wide.
It still didn’t make sense, and Tiny, whom I was beginning to suspect was developmentally challenged in some way, didn’t offer any elaboration. He looked at me blankly, a few feet away from where I stood. He had made a half-hearted attempt to follow Max, but her speed, coupled with his girth and flat feet, had made him give up almost as soon as he had started.
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