Crazy for Cornelia (18 page)

“She’s a pinhead.” Kevin waved his hand.

“So what are you, Brainiac?”

“No,” Kevin explained. “I mean she’s got body piercing with pins all over her face and a little gold Cheerio on her tongue.”

“A tongue ring’s for sex,” Marne defended.

“Marne, ”
Helen scolded her.

“She liked me ’cause you told her I had a piece in the Stinson Gallery. She wanted me to introduce her to Jessica Fernandez.”

“So?” Marne said. “Help her out, I bet she’ll pay you back with her Cheerio.”

He should add the little tidbit that Jessica kicked his Saint Sebastian out of the gallery, but hesitated to pile more gloom
and doom onto his family now.

“She’s not gonna want to go out with a—” Kevin stopped before he said “doorman.” He took a swallow of the whiskey instead.
It had an aftertaste like smoking metal. How could his parents drink the stuff? He struggled for something to say now. He
came here to soothe his father and, after twenty minutes, had already insulted his job. But Dennis Doyle smiled thinly at
his son, maybe for the first time since his wife died.

Kevin finally asked him, “You didn’t want the doorman job either?”

His father pursed his lips and spoke softly. “I learned the brewer’s trade so I didn’t have to suck up to people, Kevin. Back
then, New York was a blue-collar town. We joked our breweries would close when the Dodgers left Brooklyn.” He gave a sad laugh.
“Who drank Beck’s back then? No, I hated going to Eddie for a servant’s job. I could have been a brewer in the West Indies,
making Red Stripe with the Rastafarians, all of us living on a beach. But your mother wouldn’t have it.”

“Why?” Kevin asked.

“She wanted you raised here, for the museums.” Dennis started to say more, then looked away.

Marne got up from her seat.

“Well, he’s gonna show ’em.” She raised her fists in front of her, bobbing back and forth in front of Kevin’s chair.

“Marne, c’mon,” he laughed, knowing he’d better stand up or he’d get clobbered. She swatted at him expertly but he sidestepped
her.

She pounced back in front of him. “Don’t make me hurt you, Kevin.”

She feinted with her left, then hooked around with her right like a snake and gave him a sisterly kidney shot.

“Ooooof. Two out of three,” he gasped.

“Jeez, Marne,” Dennis laughed, “go easy on him.”

“You’re so outclassed.” Marne smiled, keeping her eyes locked on his.

“Marne…” Kevin dodged a smooth right, feeling the air hum by his cheek.

“That Jessica Fernandez. Tell her you want twenty-five thousand bucks for Saint Sebastian. A saint shouldn’t go home with
anybody for less, right?”

“Uh… Marne…” He really ought to fess up about the Stinson Gallery.

But then they heard the downstairs buzzer and a squawking from the intercom after Helen asked who was there.

Marne faked another left, but Kevin caught her right wrist on its way to his chin.

“Good boy.” She mussed his hair like always.

Helen let the lawyer in. He was a pale, officious man in his thirties who wore black earmuffs and a herringbone overcoat.
His chin stuck out and his glasses were so thick it was like looking the wrong way through a telescope. He carried a bulging
briefcase.

“I’m Mr. Hellman from the law office of Jon Landau.”

The family all stared at this man who would call himself “Mr. Hellman” with other adults. He didn’t shake hands, just took
his coat and earmuffs off and dropped them on the couch. Then he flopped down on Dennis’s chair without asking permission
and snapped open the briefcase, pulling out a yellow legal pad and a form on a clipboard. He looked at the form while he spoke
to them.

“Which one of you is Dennis Doyle?”

“I am.” His father sat on the couch. Marne sat coolly beside him, folding her hands in what Kevin recognized as self-control.

“These are my daughters, Marne and Helen, and my son, Kevin.”

Hellman’s eyes flicked up, huge behind his lenses, then fell back to the form as the gold pen he flourished struck paper.
“Social Security number?”

“Where’s Jon Landau?” Dennis asked.

Hellman gave him a surprised, sour look. “He’s a litigator, a trial lawyer. Before I can recommend your case to Mr. Landau,
I need to do a screening process. We want to see if your case has merit before we can get you justice.”

Kevin could tell by the way he said “justice” that he really meant “money.” That was what the law office of Jon Landau had
boasted about in its TV ads. He got a feeling from Hellman like the aftertaste from the whiskey.

Dennis merely nodded his head. “We believe that Mrs. Doyle would not have lost her footing on the staircase if it wasn’t as
black as a coal mine. If our landlord had paid the Con Ed bill on time—”

Hellman held up his hand like a school crossing guard. Kevin guessed that he preferred to hear himself talk than listen to
anybody. Kevin looked at Marne. She seemed ready to rip the lawyer’s hand off.

“Let’s just follow my procedure, okay? I’ve got twenty minutes here.” Hellman’s voice snapped like a rubber band at the end
of each word.

For the first nineteen minutes, the lawyer asked brief questions to extract financial information. Did his mother work? Did
they carry life insurance on her? Finally he came back to the issue of the landlord.

“Did you ever complain to the landlord in writing?”

“I complained five times to the building super,” Dennis told him.

“Mr. Doyle, did you put it in writing, yes or no? We need to establish that the landlord created a dangerous condition and
he did it in a negligent or reckless manner.”

“No, I didn’t notify him in writing.” Dennis slumped, deflated and seething.

Hellman shook his head. “We’d have to pull his Con Ed records then, show a pattern. We’re already talking time and effort
on our part.”

“I thought that’s what legal work was,” Kevin said, “time and effort.”

Hellman blinked. “We have to assess the value of each death. No offense, but your mother was no kid. Even throwing in punitive
damages, pain and suffering, we could only figure on a $500,000 suit. A case like this, we’d settle for half, and our firm
keeps a third of that. We’re not looking at
Wheel of Fortune
here, folks.”

Marne started to breathe deeply but Dennis held her arm.

“Do you think it’s right, what the landlord did?” Kevin asked him.

“I can’t answer a question like that,” Hellman said, putting the
papers back in his briefcase and snapping it shut. “But I can tell you we’re going to pass on this one.”

“Why don’t you keep
all
the money instead of just a third,” Dennis told Hellman. “Just sue the landlord because he shouldn’t get away with it.”

Hellman stood up and put his coat on while he thought over Dennis’s offer. “Sorry. We’ve got a state ethics code, and I don’t
think we could keep the whole award. Anyway, I couldn’t make your case convincing.”

“Yeah? What’s your first name?” Kevin asked him.

Hellman looked up at him strangely. “Mister.”

“Your mother named you that?” Marne asked wide-eyed.

He grinned a notch, finally noticing that Marne was pretty. “My friends call me Mickey.”

“Mickey,” Kevin said, “I bet you could make a jury feel all the pain and suffering our mom did.”

Hellman laughed over his shoulder walking out. “I’m glad you’re so sure.”

“It’s easy, Mickey,” Kevin said as he hopped up. “I’ll just break those glasses you got on and see how far you get down the
staircase.”

Hellman swiveled toward Kevin and his eyes bulged like basketballs behind the thick glasses. He bolted for the front door
and got it open, escaping to the landing.

Kevin followed and stamped his feet, running in place so it sounded like he was chasing him down the stairs. Hellman didn’t
look back. He just tore down the staircase as fast as his shoes could navigate the oily imitation Astroturf. The Doyles gathered
to watch him slip and clutch at the freshly painted wall all the way down.

“There’s no railing either,” Dennis called down.

“I’ll sue you,” Hellman shouted back up, almost losing his balance.

“Hey, Mickey, you forgot your ears,” Kevin said as he tossed the lawyer’s black furry earmuffs down the staircase after him.

Kevin walked east, looking around each corner and alley carefully. The walk home could be trouble in spots. When he reached
his
neighborhood, he twisted his neck looking right, left, and behind him. Gangs hung out in pockets, so you walked a block,
ran a block.

Graffiti plagued his street, beyond any pretense that it was street art. The hostile spray-painted words, most of them unintelligible,
covered buildings, sidewalks, and cars.

He saw an Alphabet City regular. She was a disheveled homeless woman who came every night, knelt down on the sidewalk with
a knife sharpener, and honed the spikes on a “Severe Tire Damage” grating at the exit of a parking lot.

A man in fourteen layers of raggedy clothes, his face smeared with black, passed close to Kevin on the sidewalk. His red eyes
burned with violence. He turned suddenly.

“Vermin!” he yelled at Kevin.

“Demon!” Kevin yelled back, pointing at him.

The street nut pulled back and walked away, dispirited, muttering to himself.

He approached his decrepit building on Avenue B. Had Cornelia Lord ever seen his neighborhood slumming around, going to bars?
Maybe she’d excused herself around the crack dealers, dodged the muggers and crazy mutts. In her Uptown way, Cornelia Lord
was pretty crazy herself.

He wondered why he was wondering about her.

Because a girl like her who jumped into trouble like a gopher was interesting. And maybe she just
looked
crazy. Maybe she had a reason that the father, the boyfriend, and the weasel shrink couldn’t figure out.

He thought about the man he had seen in the coffee shop who flailed his arms around like a lunatic. Then Kevin saw the fly
pestering him.

He tried to imagine, if Cornelia Lord had her own fly, what it would look like.

C
orny made a light waterfall noise in her head as Tucker took her hand firmly in his.

She chose to shut out the noisy babble of JFK International Terminal, a multicultural crossroads where all passengers were
treated equally as livestock, funneled into the airplanes. Instead, she heard the humming in her head like Iguazú Falls. She
could also hear the maestro.
“My preenchaysa,”
he purred to her from his Tesla airship, luffing over the falls.

The Electric Girl inside her practically snapped her fingers in anticipation, wanting to see what Tucker had promised to show
her.

“I almost lost it when you left so suddenly,” she heard Tucker tell her with much sincerity.

Cornelia frowned.

“I have something else I want to ask you,” he intoned with the little tree frog in his voice again. “But I want to wait until
you’re sitting down.”

She watched his eyes as they stepped outside the terminal. They told her nothing. She saw that Lord & Company’s gray Koi limousine
waited. Chester’s driver, Mike, held the door.

“Hi, Mike,” she said.

“Ms. Lord.” Mike gave her the hint of a smirk. He seemed to get a kick out of whatever mischief she caused that brought Tucker
here.

She always saw just the faint outline of a nasty brown corona around the Panda limousine. It was the only inanimate object
she had ever seen that possessed one. She peeked inside to make sure that sneaky Dr. Bushberg was not inside with men in white
to throw a net over her head. The plush little matchbox interior was empty. She ducked in, settling into the seat opposite
Tucker’s and placing her duffel bag on the seat next to her, covering it with her arm.

“Tucker…” she began.

“Shhh.” He held his finger gently to her lips, picked up her hand and squeezed it. “Soon.”

This inflamed her curiosity, and she squirmed on the leather seat. But she said nothing. She let Tucker hold her hand, without
speaking, for the ten minutes of driving to their destination, watching the rest of the airport go by. When the limousine
stopped, the cheap brakes grabbing, she saw through the darkened window that they entered the Fifth Avenue of JFK International,
the secluded corner for private aviation. Here business jets sat inside heated hangars with cushions all fluffed up for important
people.

This hangar had “Lord” stenciled on the door. She recognized it from many years before as the one where her father kept his
company jet.

Tucker held the door open for her.

A Gulfstream V, sparkling white, stood up on its black toes with maroon pinstripes like angel hair and a glossy Lord & Company
logo emblazoned on the door. It looked brand-new, but didn’t interest her. She looked beyond to the bustle at the far end
of the hangar, then headed toward the activity.

A video screen hung on one wall next to a color map stuck with bright red pins. Crates and boxes, bearing red tags, were stacked
up on the floor. About ten busy young executives, dressed in khaki bush outfits as though embarking on a safari, hurried around
taking inventory of the boxes. Some shouted out the numbers of different items and marked them off on clipboards. Others yelled
orders into cell phones.

“Tucker, what is this?”

He motioned her to a fold-out chair set up in front of the video
screen. She sat. He carried his laptop, of course, which he plugged into a box that controlled the video screen.

“This… is Brazil.” His voice was measured, like a Travel Channel announcer.

He tapped his magical laptop, and the same visual he had shown her in the Air Brasilia terminal popped up on the giant video
screen. It was a detailed topographical map showing the interior of Brazil, focusing on the dense jungle region.

She peered at the insert of an old man. Under the man’s picture, she saw the legend, “Tesla Tower Engineer.”

Tucker moved his finger on his laptop’s mini-joystick, no bigger than a mouse’s penis. He jockeyed a red cursor to blink on
and off by the capital city of Brasilia. “And this is where a ninety-year-old scientist lives who claims he worked with Nikola
Tesla.”