1 Breakfast at Madeline's (13 page)

18

As we drove away from Judy's house, I questioned the kids about whether J
udy had left them alone at Made
line's for a while last night. Gretzky said yes, the Babe said no, and further attempts at cross-examination were unsuccessful, because the witnesses kep
t inter
rupting with loud burps and giggles.

I was desperate to hit the 11:25 train and ditch that grocery bag in an Amtrak locker. But even after I dropped off the kids, I still had to have a talk with Dave the Fish before I left town. He was in our kitchen when I got there, doing his dusting-for-fingerprints routine on the silver high heel. Unfortunately, the mud and rain had eliminated all fingerprints but my own.

I put my arm around him. "Listen, old pal, old snowblowing buddy—"

"Yeah, yeah, what do you want?"

I cut the clowning. "Dave, so far there have been one arson and two burglarie
s that are all connected to Don
ald Penn. Also, I have reason to believe that Penn was blackmailing people."

Dave looked up from his dusting. "Who?"

"I'm not sure yet. But the point is, the police should reopen their investigation of his death. Exhume his body, find out if someone put poison in his coffee or whatever."

Dave rolled his eyes. "Poison in his coffee?"

"Did anyone check
his blood for some kind of poi
son?" Dave simply rolled his eyes again. Just as I thought, no one had checked. "Look, the guy had three cups every morning—at City Hall, the Arts Council, and Madeline's. Any one of those coffees could have killed him."

"Three coffees, huh? Well, that explains it. Probably got a heart attack from all that caffeine." I started to reply, but Dave held up his hand and stopped me with a patronizing, wise-cop-to-naive-civilian smile. "You've spent too much time in Hollywood, my man. We still don't even know for sure that
any of these crimes are re
ally connected to Penn."

"Oh, come on—"

"We're not even sure it was arson."

"Give me a fucking break!"

Dave narrowed hi
s eyes. Our relationship was en
tering uncharted territ
ory. I'd never cussed at him be
fore, we were just friendly acquaintances. "Look, I'm sorry, but—"

Dave waved off my apology. "Hey, even if it is arson, you still gotta suspect
the
landlord first. From what I hear the guy's
a sleazebag, and he's got a va
cant first floor, a second-floor tenant that's leaving, and a third-floor tenan
t that's dead. What's a poor ab
sentee landlord to do?"

If I told Dave about the brick that flew through Molly Otis's window, maybe I could convince him. But I'd promised Molly to keep that little golden nugget to myself.

So I gave Dave my fiercest look, which I got from watching Roger Clemens's face when he's about to fire his high hard fastball, and declared intensely, "Dave.
Trust me.
That fire was about Donald Penn."

Dave didn't answer. I gave the Clemens face some extra juice and he looked away, but he still didn't give
in, just sat there shaking his head at the floor. So I changed tacks. "Man, if you don't help me out on this, you can forget about me trimming your hedges this summer."

Dave laughed, the tension broken. "Kind of tr
im
ming job
you
do, is that supposed to be a threat?" Then he clapped me on the shoulder. "Jacob, I tell you what. I'll take it up with the chief."

I nodded, but I had a feeling Dave wouldn't push this too hard for me. He was a nice-enough guy, but no Mel Gibson. Then again, who is? Probably even Mel Gibson isn't Mel Gibson, if you know what I mean.

Having concluded my unsatisfactory conversation with Dave, I proceede
d to have an equally unsatisfac
tory conversation with Andrea while I hurriedly packed a peanut butter sandwich for the train. I was pumping her for any possible links between Judy and The Penn, or Judy and the mayor, but she wasn't very helpful. In fact, she was practically homicidal. "What?! You think
Judy
had something to do with this?" she sputtered.

"I'm just—"

"Jacob, don't be an idiot!"

"But—"

"Judy is my best friend!"

I steeled myself against her sisterly wrath. "How much money does the mayor contribute to the Literacy Volunteers?"

"I don't know, maybe ten thousand last year, but who gives a shit? What are you trying to say? The mayor gives to all kinds of charities. He's rich!"

True, but still... Ten grand was pretty darn grand, especially by Saratoga
Springs standards. It was prob
ably a third of the entire Literacy Volunteers budget, maybe more. Why had the mayor been so generous?

Judy was an absolute
fanatic about the Literacy Vol
unteers, giving it the same kind of love other women give their children. Was the mayor himself also
enam
ored of the Literacy Volunteers, or was he just trying to curry favor with the e
ditor of the town's only newspa
per?

Of course, currying favor with people isn't exactly illegal. Usually it's not even immoral.

I waved good-bye to my still-angry wife and roared off, finally, to the Albany train station. Looking around to make sure no one w
as watching, I stashed the fate
ful grocery bag in a locker and pocketed the key.

Then
I raced to the 11:25 train, and made it with one and two-thirds seconds to spare. I opened my peanut butter sandwich, and was so beat I fell asleep before I even got around to eating it.

I didn't wake up until we rode into Penn Station. Which was fortunate, because if I'd been awake, I'd have gone berserk. The train was an express, sch
ed
uled to get in at 2:10,
but because of "undiagnosed en
gine troubles"—the Amtrak version of delayed concussion syndrome, I suppose—we did the last leg of the trip at groundhog speed and didn't arrive in New York City until 4:44.
I
had approximately 16 mi
n
utes to get to NYFA
before they closed for the week
end.

To make matters worse, when I came up from the bowels of Penn Stati
on onto Eighth Avenue, I discov
ered that seven years of living outside The City had dulled my street savvy. Other, more ruthless
pedestri
ans kept beating me out
for taxis. I was reduced to rac
ing the many blocks to the NYFA office on foot, hoping against hope I could make it by 5:00.

When I finally got there, at 5:02, the secretary had her jacket on and was halfway out the door. She was a cute fake blonde—or as they say in the
New York Daily News
, "bottle blonde"—who would have been cuter, in
my opinion, without the two purple lip rings. Though I did like the Groucho Marx tattoo right above her left breast.

I played on Groucho Girl's sympathy by huffing and puffing for breath after my long run. I played on the rest of her emotions by putting my left hand in my pocket so she woul
dn't see my wedding ring. Unmar
ried men who are into the arts and don't "look gay" are at a premium in New York, and I was hoping that would help me out.

It did. After I did the requisite fawning and flirting, Groucho Girl took off her jacket—revealing tattoos of all the Marx Brothers,
including Zeppo and Gummo,
which was so classy I almost forgave the purple lip rings—and found me the 1998 Saratoga Springs file. Since NYFA is publicly funded and their grants are a matter of public record, their files are open to anyone, especially cute guys who might be single.

I reached out for the file with trembling hands—
ac
tually, just one trembling hand, because I kept my left one hidden in case I needed any more favors from Groucho Girl. Then I open
ed up the file.
At last: the mo
ment of truth.
Now I'd find out who threatened The Penn's life. Maybe I'd even find out who The Penn was blackmailing
...
and who had the motive to kill him.

I zoomed through the applications.
Albanese, Atwater
...
alphabetical order again.
Hosey, Introcaso
...
almost there. Orsulak, Pardou, Preller
...

What?
Orsulak, Pardou, Preller.

Shit! It wasn't there!

I groaned, miserable, but Groucho Girl didn't notice. "It's funny, you asking for the Saratoga stuff," she said cheerfully, making conversation. "There was someone in here a couple days ago, asking for the same thing."

I stared. "Who was it?"

She shrugged her shoulders and gave her head a pretty shake. Unfortunately her lip rings shook too, destroying the effect. "I don't know. Some lady."

Some lady?
"What'd she look like?"

She wrinkled her eyebrows in thought. "Um, pretty old, like in her fifties? Short hair, big earrings
...
"

"And big teeth?"

She nodded and smiled brightly. So did Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gummo. "You know her?"

Yeah, I knew her, all right.

Gretchen Lang.

I took my left hand out of my pocket and rubbed my chin with it, so Groucho Girl would see my wedding ring and wouldn't ask me out to dinner or whatever. Though for all I knew, I was greatly overestimating my appeal. Before I met Andrea, I used to always get mixed up about which women were interested in me and which weren't. I wondered briefly how you kiss someone who's wearing a lip ring, but decided I'd wait until another lifetime to find out.

I waved good-bye to her and all her Marx Brothers, especially Zeppo
and Gummo, and hustled back out
side. This time I managed to catch the very first cab that came along, showing some true New York spirit by beating out an elderly man with a cane, and made it back to Penn Station in time for the 5:28 train home.

Sorry about the elderly guy, but I was in a hurry.

I needed to go back to Saratoga and kick some ass.

The return train was miraculously free of engine troubles, diagnosed or otherwise, so I made it back to Saratoga just after nine o'clock. I called Andrea from the Mobil station south of town to make sure all was quiet on the home front, and it turned out Dave was over at the house wa
tching TV with the kids. My fam
ily was in good h
ands. Maybe Dave wasn't Mel Gib
son, but at least he was a good solid Jimmy Stewart.

Andrea commiserated with me about not being able to get hold of Penn's application, then asked, "So where are you calling from?"

"Um," I began, and then, "I'm on the pay phone in the train. We're still south of Hudson. Be back in about an hour and a half, okay?"

"Okay, honey. Love you."

"Love you too, honey
," I replied, and hung up, feel
ing guilty. Oh well, it wasn't like I was having an affair or anything. I just didn't want to get into an argument with her about what I was about to do. If I was going to try out my Philip Marlowe imitation, I needed some freedom to maneuver.

I borrowed a phone book from the Mobil cashier, found Gretchen Lang's address, and chugged over there. Gretchen lived in an old Victorian on North Broadway, which was emphatically the
right
end of Broadway, where heirs, heiresses, CEOs, and others of their ilk reside during the racing season. I knew Gretchen was well off, but I had no idea she was this well off. The front facade of her mansion was a wild
mélange
of Corinthian columns, captain's walks, French doors, and intricate
flourishes painted in "tra
ditional Saratoga colors"—purple, white, and green. It looked kind of like a giant gingerbread house, and would have been cutesy if it weren't so grand.

Gretchen's salary at the Arts Council must be pretty minimal, so I speculated, as I walked up the long tulip
-
fringed path to her front door, that her husband must be a robber baron businessman type. Moneymaker husband, artistic wife—a classic combo dating back 50,000 years to when some cavewoman in southern France figured out how to draw woolly mammoths on
the wall with berry ju
ice while her man went off hunt
ing the real thing.

The wind shook the leaves of Gretchen's stately oak trees. It was a cold spring night, the kind that gets people talking about that big May blizzard of '78. I missed my jacket, the
one I'd left behind in the burn
ing Arts Council. Hopefully, it had been reduced to ashes before any cops got hold of it.

The outdoor light came on before I made it to the door, which made me think someone was home. But then I realized it was just one of those motion-sensitive anti-crime gizmos. In
this part of Saratoga, homeown
ers don't forget to lock their doors. Some of them have bathroom fixtures that cost more than my entire house.