“More like puttana pazza,” I say, using another Italian phrase I picked up.
The old guy narrows his good eye at me in disapproval. “Don’t refer to your mother that way, Miss Starr. A parent should be treated with respect.”
“She didn’t show me much respect when she left me on the side of the highway,” I say, looking through the rain at the passing median, wondering not for the first time whether that was the place I’d last seen her. Then again, Rod’s inconsistencies on the details of my abandonment make me wonder if the whole thing was just a story for my benefit. Family lore passed down to cover up something either more mundane or more sinister.
“That aside, it is important in families to remain loyal. Your mother was not good at this. She didn’t understand the importance of family.”
“Tell me about it.” We’re crossing the bridge now, and I’m a little concerned it might be our destination. Then I remember they installed steel veils along the sides last year. A bid to stop the suicides that took place at least once a month. One guy had tried just the same, but he ended up too far over to hit the parkway below. Instead he landed with a thud on a high-school playing field that bordered the freeway, where a bunch of senior girls were playing soccer. He was conscious when they called 911. Poor bastard, he probably thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he saw all those bare teenage girls’ legs huddled around him.
“The situation is this, Miss Starr. The head of the Scarpello family is in his declining years. He is not a well man.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you for your concern.” He leans forward again to whisper something in the driver’s ear. “We are also concerned. Tell me, have you heard from your mother over the years?”
“No.”
“It would seem strange, for a mother, to not at least check in on her daughter, even the once. Perhaps when you were on trial?” So they had noticed. I knew Malone’s intel wasn’t to be trusted. The cops don’t know their dons from their Black Donnellys around here.
“I’ve never heard from her,” I say. The driver takes an exit ramp, slowing down as he comes around the curve in the slippery rain.
“Perhaps you have heard of her whereabouts? We wonder whether she may have started a new family. There could be siblings of yours that have reached out to you, maybe a brother?” I’ve never thought about the possibility of my mother having other children. It seemed to me that when you have the maternal instinct of a gnat you would do something bright like having your tubes tied or your uterus yanked out. It would be cool to have a brother. Then it occurs to me why the old man is asking.
“You’re worried about when the old don dies,” I say. “About who’s going to take over.” They don’t care about me. I haven’t got the right equipment between my legs to stake a claim in their all-male hierarchy, but a brother would be different.
“Our succession plans are well thought out, Miss Starr. It is important to have continuity of leadership in an organization such as ours.” He clears his throat, holding one heavily knuckled hand up to his mouth. “We wouldn’t want anyone causing undue stress or turmoil when the time comes.”
We’re moving through an underpass that runs under the highway we were travelling on before. When we stop at the lights, a sleeping kid on a bench gets up and tries to walk over to the car with his squeegee. The thug in the front passenger seat lets down his tinted window and exposes his bulging chest. The kid goes back to the bench and crawls into his soggy sleeping bag.
“Listen, I don’t know where my mother is, and I don’t care.”
“Then why have you been asking questions about her?”
Lying, in my experience, is usually the best policy. In this case, though, it doesn’t seem like a wise course of action. Plus, his eye is really freaking me out. It makes for a stunning interrogation technique. I must tell Malone about it.
“I’m trying to find out who killed my father,” I say. “I wondered whether my mother had been involved.” I don’t tell him that I also wondered whether the Scarpello family had been involved. Truth is the most useful when you only use half of it.
“Ah, Mike Starr,” the old man says. “Another misplaced loyalty of your mother’s.”
“At least he stuck around to raise me.” I’m pissed that I have to defend my father to this condescending wise guy. But I won’t tolerate any trash talk about my dad if that’s where this is going.
“Regardless, he was not an appropriate choice for your mother. She disrespected the family’s wishes by marrying him. As she disrespected most of their wishes.”
“Did you know my father?” I ask.
“I met him once,” he says. “Shortly after your mother announced she was with child. Normally, the family would have gathered around at such a time. Raised the child as part of our community and perhaps taken the father to task for …” He pauses, looking for a polite phrase. “Taking liberties,” he says. “But in this case, your mother was already showing signs of instability. We thought it best for her to leave with him and sever ties permanently.” I wonder what lengths the Scarpellos might have gone to in order to disassociate themselves. Murder, in my experience, is the most reliable and permanent severer of ties.
“Why didn’t you kill her?” I ask, getting to the point.
“She was carrying a man’s child,” he says, looking horrified. “This would be a sin.”
I like how we keep talking about this child as if it weren’t me. As if I’m something hypothetical like a butterfly that might flap its wings and cause chaos somewhere, or maybe just attract other bastard butterflies.
“Then we heard that you were born, and we were not as concerned.”
Yeah, you sexist bastard, because I wasn’t a boy who might come back and bite you all in your patriarchal asses.
“We like to keep track of our family members, even the estranged ones, but your mother has been elusive in that respect. Rather strange for a woman who was always attracting attention. You are sure you have heard nothing from her all this time?”
“I’m sure.” We’re cruising back into the neighbourhood now. I recognize the streets. The driver pulls up in front of a boarded-up warehouse about two blocks from the E-Zee Market; I can see the faulty neon of the sign flickering in the window off in the distance. The bodyguard or enforcer or whatever he is gets out of the car and opens up my door onto the street.
“You will contact us, Miss Starr, if you hear anything from your mother, won’t you? The old man’s health, as I said, is failing, and that is a time when you wish your family to be present, even those who have caused you distress in the past. Mortality has a way of breaking down these boundaries, wouldn’t you say?”
I don’t say anything. Just get out of the car. I look at the guy holding the door, but he doesn’t look at me. Just stares straight ahead. I half expect him to cover his eyes with his hands like one of those “see no evil” monkeys. Maybe that’s what happened to the old man’s eye. It saw too much evil, and now it’s trying to do a runner.
The bodyguard shuts my door and gets back in the car. As the Lincoln snakes around the corner, I wait and listen for the sound of the engine to fade away. Then I lift my hoodie back up and start walking home as the rain turns into a downpour. My hair’s going to frizz like a bitch tomorrow.
I think over the conversation in the car as I dodge the puddles on the sidewalk — my shit kickers don’t do well in water. It doesn’t sound like the Scarpello family gave a shit about my father. They only cared that my mother might try to stir up trouble with an heir to the family throne. And if they didn’t give a shit, they probably didn’t wait over two decades to slit his throat.
I think about this in the pouring rain, with my keys held white-knuckled in my pocket. For all the old man said about family, he was full of crap. Words, especially polite ones, are just the weights people tie on to actions to drown the truth of them. But those actions, they float to the surface over time. The Scarpello clan had over th
irty years to claim Angela Starr’s daughter as one of their own. That and the fact that they’d left me alive, and with two eyes, meant they never gave a shit about me either.
CHAPTER 12
THE NEXT MORNING I’m woken up by Majd knocking on the door. His raps are so soft, I think it’s rats scurrying in the walls again, but eventually I catch on and go open the door.
“Call for you, Miss Candace.”
I throw on a pink silk kimono that a trans gal gave to me before she kicked me to the curb for selling weed out of her apartment. It has a black-and-white crane painted on the back. I lost the tie a long time ago, so I hold it closed with my hand. I wonder if it’s the old guy from last night calling to give me a contact number in case I hear anything about my mother. He’d driven away last night without telling me how to reach him if I did. I guess the Mob doesn’t give out business cards.
“Hello,” I say. The E-Zee Market phone is bolted to the wall, old school, like all the things in this neighbourhood that showed up and were never able to leave.
“Hello, is that you, Candace?” Rod’s mother sounds just like I imagine the grandma did in Little Red Riding Hood. It’s the one book I remember my mother reading aloud, and it used to terrify me — the nasty wolf dressing up as an old lady in that creepy frilled cap with the nightdress. I still can picture the saliva dripping from his pointy canine teeth as he tries to pull one over on the little girl with her basket of goodies. All the better to see you with, my dear.
“Yes, it is, Agnes. How are you?”
“Oh, as best as can be expected. My sciatica is acting up on account of the change in weather, and Sylvia Patterson just got carted off to the Terrace.” The Terrace is the Victoria Terrace Retirement Home in St. John’s. Agnes has told me that she’ll fetch her long-dead husband’s rifle from where it’s bolted under the kitchen table and go down shooting before she’ll let anyone take her to one of those places. Rod says the only way she’s leaving her robin’s egg–blue row house on Franklyn Avenue is in a box. “Did you get the socks I sent?”
“I did,” I say. I might have felt guilty about using one of them to strain the booze out of a broken bottle on Valentine’s Day if I were the feeling-guilty type.
We chat for a bit. I don’t want to appear obvious. I know how to put a person at ease despite my often abrasive manner. Allowing themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security has been the downfall of many of my targets.
“Listen, Agnes, I’ve been thinking about making a trip this fall,” I say. “Out to Newfoundland.”
“Oh, we’d love to see you, dearie. It’s been years. I’d hardly know you, except for the pictures Rod brings me.” I squirm a bit in the silk kimono. Maybe I’m capable of feeling guilty after all. “The last time you came you were in love with that Cinnamon group or whatever they’re called, bopping around the living room with your CDs.”
“The Spice Girls,” I say, holding my hand over the receiver in case someone hears us.
“Oh yes, you wanted to be the one that none of the other girls liked.”
“Sporty Spice.”
“Ah yes, such a cute little urchin you were.” I was twelve and already six foot. I may have been an urchin, but I wasn’t little. And I’ll wipe the smile off any man’s face who ever refers to me as cute.
“The thing is, do you remember when I was working on that cruise ship for Disney five years ago?” We hadn’t told Agnes I was in the slammer. Uncle Rod made me send her Mickey Mouse postcards from jail, telling her how much fun I was having playing Sleeping Beauty at breakfast for the kids. Luckily, she was way too far-sighted to be able to read a postmark. Rod was always trying to protect Agnes from the lives we led. He didn’t tell her my father died until two years after we buried him. He said it was a fishing accident, something that apparently happens regularly in Newfoundland and no one asks questions about.
“Oh yes, I remember. I was so happy getting your sunny postcards. We had a piece of weather that year. Made my bunions scream, I’m telling you.”
“Yes, well, anyway, I think Uncle Rod flew back early that year on a charter. I wanted to book a flight, and he said the service was really good. I thought I might book my flight with the same airline.” Oh, I’m lying so shamefacedly to this old lady, I could be the wolf in the fucking fairy tale myself. “Uncle Rod couldn’t remember the name when I asked him, so I thought you might remember.”
“Oh honey, it was a few years back. I don’t think I’d remember something like that. Have a hard time remembering where I put my dentures these days.” She laughs and almost chokes a bit, as if her dentures might have started to fall out with the force of it. “But I don’t remember Roddy ever leaving early. He always books the two weeks then plants his fanny on the chesterfield until it’s time to go again. All his old buddies come to visit him here, and sometimes we even have a Céilí. When he comes from away, he likes to stay put.”
So much for my idea of Rod flying back to take out my dad and then back to Newfoundland. He’s got his mother and The Irish Rovers to vouch for his whereabouts.
“You’d love our Céilís,” Agnes continues. “So much wonderful music. Maybe I could even ask one of the girls to play that ‘Want to See’ song you like so much on the accordion.”
“Wannabe,” I say, once again cupping my hand to the phone. I can never allow this woman to talk to anyone I know.
“Come in the summer to see us, sweetheart. Or anytime. Just make sure when you come that the nor’easters are done their storming. We’ll have a wonderful time.”
Charlotte is pulling up in her hatchback when I walk out of the E-Zee Market half an hour later. She dents a mailbox as she parallel parks, straddling the curb. I pretend I don’t see her, but her little legs manage to catch up to me. She’s huffing and puffing as she calls out my name.
“Candace!”
I can no longer pretend I don’t hear her. I stop and let her catch up.
“Hi, Charlotte. Thanks for the laundry.”
“Don’t you ‘Hi, Charlotte’ me, young lady,” she says. “I was just over at Rod’s and he practically slammed the door in my face. Told me you came asking about your mother and left him on a roof. He was up there for two hours before he went around the side and tried to raise Mrs. Boddis at her bedroom window. He gave her a terrible start. She thought he was a peeper.”
“Relax, Charlotte, I got my information from an old-timer at the bar. You’re in the clear.” I don’t tell her about last night. She’s wound up enough already. I wonder briefly if Roberto was the one who blabbed to the Scarpellos but then dismiss the idea. He’s got too much class. Probably one of the less reputable types I interviewed that evening. Or someone who was listening. I must have really tied one on because I’m usually pretty wise to big ears. I make a mental note to watch for those who might need to have their lobes stapled next time I’m at the bar.
“But I was the one who put the idea in your head. Rod’s going to know it was me.” She looks really worried, yanking hard on her purse strap worn diagonally across her matronly chest.
“You tell him from me that it was the old-timer at the bar who filled me in. Tell him I’ll back that up if he wants to ask me. You didn’t admit to him what you said, did you?” There’s only one thing more stupid than getting caught for a crime, and that’s admitting to it.
“No, I didn’t,” she says. She’s starting to let up on the purse strap, but there’s still a furrow in the brow of her usually smooth dumpling face. I remember that face fretting over me in the hospital bed after I was attacked by that pack of bastards. Charlotte had plumped pillows and offered endless cups of tea I didn’t drink, hoping that kindness might magically erase the marks on my body, along with its violation. The marks disappeared over time; the violation ended up needing something stronger than tea. “Promise you’ll tell him it wasn’t me who told you about your mother?”
“I promise, Charlotte.”
She bites her lip. It’s not enough. Rod must
really be in what Agnes calls “a pressure.” Charlotte hasn’t waited all these years putting up with him in hopes of being made an honest woman to lose her chance over me and my ladder antics.
“Maybe you could come over and explain right now. I could drive you,” she says, turning to indicate her car that a postie is now inspecting suspiciously, getting out a pen from his bag to take down her licence plate.
“What the hell are you doing?” she yells, flying back toward the parked vehicle. She has all but forgotten her tiff with Uncle Rod, faced with the possibility of another moving violation that might jeopardize her driver’s licence. A document some DMV examiner had awarded her while obviously on crack. Her purse smacks on her hip as she runs threateningly toward the postie, menopause fuelling her road rage.
As I stand on the street corner and watch the altercation unfold, a minivan with two empty car seats in the back slows down beside me. The man inside holds his hand up to his mouth and makes a rude gesture with his tongue through his fingers. I turn around and start walking again. Sometimes I hate this damn neighbourhood.
After a few blocks, I slip down an alleyway and climb a fence to get in the back of a condemned building that nobody ever seems to get around to tearing down. I wedge myself through a gap in a boarded-up main-floor window. It is surrounded by a graffiti artist’s lousy attempt to draw the Incredible Hulk’s arm holding a can of aerosol paint. I enter through the crook of his acid-green elbow.
Charlotte isn’t the only one who can be convinced to cough up intel, as Malone likes to call it. I have my sources. And this time I want information not on my mother but on what two boys so young they still had placenta behind their ears were doing mixed up with the Daybreak Boys. Malone wants me to find a killer, and no matter what rage-fuelled monsters I have to go through, I’m going to find one.
The Starr Sting Scale Page 11