This Is How It Begins

by Joan Dempsey

  “Not too bad. I should be able to manage that.”

  He set the suitcase beside the door.

  Later, while Izaac was on his way to Tommy and Robert’s house for a breakfast meeting with Abe, Lolek, and Marta about the arbitration hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning, Ludka was online in the study, learning about private investigators. The upset over Stanley’s deception was finally beginning to wear off. She was feeling somewhat vindicated that her instincts about him had not been wrong after all; knowing this provided her some courage. She had a gut feeling Stanley wasn’t all that bright, and she’d started to wonder if this theft had been impulsive and somewhat thoughtless, if he had any idea what he was doing. She couldn’t be certain of that, of course—there was the business with the sunglasses, and the questionable gallery, and the legacy of his father’s fraud—but she had woken this morning filled with a fiery determination to outwit him. Perhaps a private investigator could even take care of things in her absence—safely retrieve the Chopin.

  The work of private investigators seemed to focus heavily on cheating spouses. One firm boasted about their surveillance skills and provided video samples. Each clip showed shadowy, silent footage of a man and woman talking at a bar, embracing on the street, or sitting in the window of a restaurant or car, faces blurred out to protect their identities. The quality was poor, and the men and women were so appallingly ordinary that they appeared unreal, like bad actors in a low-budget soap opera. Ludka found herself rooting for the anonymous investigators and hoping these apparently cheating pairs would kiss or provide otherwise damning ammunition for the beleaguered spouses. After several clips, though, Ludka felt sullied, the surveillance not as thrilling and suspenseful as it might be in a movie, but voyeuristic and sad.

  She chose a local company that had the most impressive website, peppered with words like discreet, confidential, and private. A pleasant woman with the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker answered the phone, took some basic information, and then connected Ludka to an investigator named Victor who, in polite and soothing tones, gave her the same assurances about confidentiality promised on their website.

  “You tell no one? No disclosure you have to make to some authority?”

  “I speak only to you, Ma’am, through whatever channels work best for you. Not even to anyone else here in the firm, unless you authorize it. Discretion is the heart of our business and we take your privacy very seriously. You can count on complete confidentiality.”

  Victor had a warm, pleasing voice and the easy confidence of a man you could trust, but his speech was too practiced, too canned. Ludka found herself wanting to say something to break through the veneer, to see what kind of man she was dealing with.

  “So you say this person is missing?”

  “Missing to me. I have his cell phone number, if that would help, and information on supposed art gallery in California.”

  “These would definitely help, yes. But let’s back up a bit and talk about what you’re trying to accomplish. We do everything aboveboard, nothing illegal, and that includes making certain that your own purpose is within the bounds of the law. He is a relative, perhaps? A child who has run away from home?”

  “No, he is …” She almost said weasel. “He has taken from me something of value. I need to know where he is keeping it.”

  “I see. And what would you have us do when we locate him?”

  Victor said this in a low, confidential voice, and Ludka hesitated, wondering what he might be insinuating. Was this the best approach, hiring someone to spy on Stanley? She left her desk and stood by the French doors. A light snow was still falling, and a small drift of it had filtered through the screen to a corner of the porch.

  “What are options?”

  “Well, we serve legal papers—subpoenas and that sort of thing—or conduct undercover discovery with the intention of determining where he’s keeping your property. We could do surveillance to videotape or photograph him in possession of your property, which would provide crucial evidence in a criminal prosecution, if you’re going that route. Or we could just turn over his location to law enforcement, and they could take over your case. It’s entirely up to you.”

  “Could you get property back for me, just take it?”

  “We can’t steal it back, if that’s what you mean. He’d have to give it to us of his own free will. Rarely happens, but it’s not impossible. I’ve been known to be convincing.”

  “Do you look like police, wear a uniform? Maybe this would fool him?”

  Victor sighed in a way that to someone else might have seemed unprofessional but to Ludka was a sign that he was capable of more than touting the company line. She began to think she might enlist his help.

  “Exactly the kind of thing we can’t do, although everyone asks. One thing we can do is try to befriend him. No law against that. He might slip up, reveal something.”

  While they talked about fees, Ludka wondered what she might tell Izaac about a withdrawal from their account—cash for Poland, perhaps. She told Victor she’d need some time to think it through.

  Outside, the snow had let up, but the sky was still steely and threatening. On a whim, Ludka dialed Stanley’s cell phone and was shocked when he picked up on the second ring, sounding wide awake. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock, which meant it wasn’t yet five in California. Stanley didn’t strike her as an early riser.

  “I can get money.”

  “Insurance come through like I said?”

  “This is none of your business. What will be the arrangements? Will I ship money to California? How will I get painting?”

  “Plenty of time for the details, Ludka.”

  She told Stanley to prove the painting was safe.

  “You must convince me, or I cancel money.”

  Stanley made a small noise of displeasure, and then she heard the distinctive sound of silverware scraping across a plate and a quick shout in the background, like that of a short-order cook. And then came a sound she heard every morning at this time—three short blasts from the whistle of a train as it approached the university, followed by a long blare as it crossed the main drag on campus. Of course trains everywhere must sound similar, and so that proved nothing, but still she couldn’t help but think he must be at Raymond’s Riverside Diner, just down the road from the crossing.

  “I don’t have it with me,” said Stanley.

  “What do you mean? Who has it?”

  “I couldn’t leave it lying around, could I? It’s perfectly safe, you don’t need to worry about that.”

  “I should maybe just take your word, you think? No. You will send me photograph, with current newspaper.”

  “What is this, a made-for-TV movie? It’s not that easy—”

  “Says the man who thinks a million-dollar ransom is simple! You will send me photograph, that is all. You may text to cell phone. By 6:00 p.m.”

  “Impossible. I can’t get to it until Monday at the earliest. I don’t have access.”

  Ludka began to grow hopeful. Wouldn’t this mean, then, that he had stored the painting in a safe-deposit box in a bank, or some short-term storage facility only opened during the week, someplace safe? But it could also be that he was on the road, days away from where it was hidden.

  “Where are you, Stanley?”

  “I’ll text you a photo early next week. When can you get the money?”

  “To this I don’t have access until my return from Poland, so you must wait. I arrive home on eleven March.”

  She actually arrived two days earlier. When Stanley hung up, she immediately called Victor.

  “I have big lead right now, but you must this minute start!”

  Victor explained that he couldn’t legally proceed without a signed contract or the required deposit, and while he was still explaining the process, Ludka hung up.

  In the car, grateful that the snow had stopped, Ludka drove faster than the speed limit, something she hadn’t done for years. She sat tall, eyes
forward, neck as taut as if she had a bad crick, and gripped each side of the wheel at three and nine o’clock, the tension causing a tremor in her arms that went all the way to her shoulders. She realized with relief that her shoulder felt better. She took a breath and tried to relax her hands. Less than ten minutes later, she turned onto Riverside Road and slowed as she approached the diner. The parking area was packed. She wished she’d taken more notice of what Stanley had been driving—a small sedan, she knew, but what color or make she had no recollection. She went around back and pulled in alongside an enormous depository of plowed-up snow. As she was maneuvering her way out of the car, she realized she had forgotten her galoshes. With dismay, she surveyed the short expanse of treacherous ground that lay between her and the diner. The lot was dirt to begin with, and even though it had been repeatedly sanded and salted, the morning’s light snow still mostly obscured the winter’s worth of packed snow and ice that lay beneath. Too risky. Perhaps she could follow the scattered tire tracks back to the front entrance? Still sitting, she put both feet firmly on the ground, glad to feel the solid grit of salt and sand. Tentatively, she stood, keeping a hold on the seat back and the door. She shuffled to the side, closed the door, let go of the car, and pushed her right foot forward, then her left, and after a few tense moments she began to gain a confidence she tried immediately to squelch. At eighty-five, confidence was not always a virtue, and this was one of those times it could be downright dangerous. Another shuffling step, and then another, and then her foot began to slip forward of its own accord, and she caught herself with a shocking jolt before it could fly out from under her. Tingling adrenaline shot through her whole body, and she stood very still, arms held rigidly cocked for balance, four feet away from the car, an impossible distance from the diner, and it was in that moment, as she stood frozen in the parking lot, that she finally stopped to ask herself exactly what it was she planned to do. All the way over she had imagined confronting Stanley, making demands while he sat dumbly on a padded stool, an egg-filled fork halfway to his mouth that she would smack away before slapping again at his face, a bit of blood appearing on his teeth. But this was an image from some Hollywood picture, not from her own life, and she thought about how she’d told Victor that Stanley wasn’t the brightest, and here she was, stupidly rushing forth. The whole of the last few days began to catch up with her. It was all she could do to stay standing. From the back wall of the diner, an industrial fan roared and spewed out kitchen exhaust: coffee grounds, friolator grease, and dishwasher steam laced with bleach. She surveyed the ground surrounding her. How could she possibly travel all the way to Warsaw when she couldn’t even make it back to the car? She thought of the fallen shawls, and Izaac’s yarmulke, and she drew in her arms and held them.

  Two young women came around the corner, laughing, and then one of them called out to her.

  “Do you need some help?”

  Ludka automatically lifted an arm to wave off the offer, but stopped herself, and nodded grimly.

  Back in the car, she called Victor, and he told her of course, he looked forward to meeting her, to come right over.

  “In one hour I will be there.”

  She pulled the car around to the front of the diner and settled in to watch the front door.

  22

  Preparing to Fight

  Lolek sat uncomfortably between his father and Marta on a tall, caned chair at Tommy and Robert’s kitchen island, the grit on his shoes from the sanded road grinding against the footrest. They had gathered to prepare for the arbitration hearing. The marbled gray counter—which Lolek had thought was granite but was apparently concrete—was cold under his hands. He was glad of the warm mug of coffee Robert had just handed him. Lolek hadn’t been in Tommy’s house since they’d first moved in a couple years ago; he was having trouble reconciling the fully adult furnishings with his notions about his son, which Lolek was starting to understand were outdated at best, or wholly and erroneously assumed at worst. In fact, now that he really thought about it, a memory of Tommy from years ago tended to color all his thoughts about his son, a singular image from Lolek’s first campaign for statewide office: Tommy, at eleven, sitting at their kitchen table with ten-year-old Maria Rose, and with Frank and Marta, and his parents, and probably Aggie, although he couldn’t be certain she’d joined him yet, folding letters and stuffing envelopes. Tommy had taken charge of routing the bundled letters into the correct bulk mail bins and preventing the supplies from overwhelming the table, and he kept them all entertained with stories about what they might do when they were “in the public eye,” stories Lolek wished he could remember now. What he did remember was a specific moment in which Tommy had caught his eye, smiled warmly, and seemed so completely and utterly in his element that Lolek had allowed himself to imagine an entire political future with his son at his side. First Izaac, then Lolek, then Tommy: three generations, a new Massachusetts dynasty.

  Now Tommy was scooping fresh coffee grounds into the steel coffee maker. His kitchen cabinets were bright white and glass-paned, the walls painted a soft mocha, and all the appliances were faced in spotless stainless steel, which Lolek knew from his Beacon Hill apartment were only stainless if you attended to them routinely with special cleansers, which Lolek did not. Among the photos neatly arranged on the surface of the refrigerator was one of Tommy and Robert at the edge of a calm surf on a vast, sandy beach, no one in sight behind them, the sky a brilliant blue. They each wore finely tailored suits the color of rich chocolate, the cuffs rolled messily up to just below their knees, their feet bare. They were holding hands, and laughing wildly, Tommy leaning forward as if about to clutch his stomach, Robert with his head thrown back, each of them holding a single calla lily. Lolek couldn’t help but grin at their infectious, unfettered joy, but the smile faded immediately and he had to lower his head; he wondered who had been there to take the picture, and tried to keep himself from wondering if on another occasion Tommy would have put it in a drawer had he known Lolek was coming over, before the revelation last week, when Tommy confessed to being married.

  Lolek’s hip ached. He pushed off the tall chair and moved to the end of the island, his back to the fridge.

  Robert opened the oven and pulled out a tray of parmesan-scallion scones, just as Abe Goodman came through the screened porch, knocking on the kitchen door as he entered.

  “Your paparazzi’s back,” he said. “Just Channel 7, Wendy Chen. Asked me what our meeting was about, whether we might be planning a class action. I wish that were possible.”

  “It’s not?” said Tommy.

  “We don’t have a large enough group, believe it or not, and we’d need to be suing a single entity, not a bunch of different schools.”

  Tommy went to the front windows in the dining room and peeked through the break in the curtains, which they’d kept drawn since the assault. The Channel 7 truck was parked across the road, its satellite dish rising into position. Wendy Chen talked with the woman operating the camera.

  “They haven’t been here all week,” he said, coming back into the kitchen. “I wonder why today?”

  “Saturday,” said Lolek. “Slow news day.”

  “They thought they might find us out shoveling the walk?”

  “Maybe they’re getting B-roll, just in case,” said Robert.

  “With a satellite truck?” said Tommy. “More likely they’re following the senator. Or maybe someone tipped them off about our meeting.”

  He stressed the word someone, and Lolek knew it was directed at him. He opened his palms questioningly, but Tommy didn’t see him, or chose to ignore him. Marta shot him a look as if she didn’t doubt that Lolek might have tipped them off, and he laid a hand over his heart and shook his head.

  “It does look a little like The Sopranos out there,” said Robert, “all those dark and important vehicles. Maybe they heard about the graffiti.”

  “I’m glad you were already able to paint over that,” said Marta.

  “What g
raffiti?” said Lolek.

  “Don’t scrutinize it,” Tommy said to his mother. “It’s really too cold to paint. I’m not convinced it won’t bleed through, but we’ll fix it up in the spring.”

  “I expect it’s not the last time we’ll have to paint,” said Robert. He passed out small plates and napkins, and set a basket of scones on the island.

  When no one answered Lolek about the graffiti, he found himself recoiling, retreating inside himself to calm his anger, and he realized just how often lately he’d had this feeling with his family, how quickly he’d begin to feel insignificant. He leaned on the counter with both fists, knuckles down, his wedding band clacking against the concrete. He could have sworn it was granite. When he took a hot scone, he grasped it so hard it split in two before he got it to his plate.

  “I don’t know why you still haven’t installed a security system,” he said. “You can’t be too—”

  “Because we just don’t want to, Dad. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “What I was going to say is you can’t afford to be too naive. You and Robert have got to protect yourselves now. Things have changed.”

  “What’s changed? What do you think is different?”

  Tommy waved a hand over his bruised face and touched his tender ribs.

  “This? This is nothing, Dad. This is nothing every gay man doesn’t fear every day of his life.”

  Robert put a hand on Tommy’s back and held it there. Lolek wondered if Robert was warning Tommy to curb his tone or was instead offering a sign of support, an encouragement to say whatever he was going to say. Lolek told himself he shouldn’t escalate the tension by responding, he should just turn to Abe to get the meeting underway. He took a breath and began to brush at the mess of crumbs he’d left on the counter, but when he saw the way his father was studiously chewing a bite of his scone, a sympathetic frown on his face, and Abe was busying himself with a stack of files, and Marta was eyeing the crumbs he had missed, Lolek knew he couldn’t let himself be cowed by his own son, or allow the undercurrent of whatever Tommy was really trying to say go unaddressed.