Death Will Help You Leave Him (20 page)

My jaw clenched on all the things it wouldn’t help to say.

“I wish I could.”

“It’s no use,” she said. “I’m a lost cause. Save yourself, Bruce. You should walk away.”

Then she kissed me on the cheek, her soft lips parted. The tip of her tongue darted out for a little lick at the corner of my mouth. So I knew she didn’t mean it.

After the fiasco down in SoHo, Jimmy and I had to start the visit to the Gaglias all over again. I spent the interim mostly on the couch, draped in ice packs and turning interesting shades of black and blue. And popping Tylenol, which didn’t have much kick without the codeine. My sponsor advised me not to risk it. “You can take a little pain,” he said. Tough love. “It’s not worth experimenting and ending up in relapse.”

We decided to bring the Toyota for artistic verisimilitude. It had a plausible collection of dings and dents from what Jimmy called fender benders and Barbara called slight disagreements with inanimate objects.

“I’ve never hit a person or a car,” she said with indignant pride.

“Parked cars don’t count?” Jimmy asked.

“We live in Manhattan!” Where parallel parking is more than an item on your road test and even a Beetle or Mini gets used to being shoehorned into spots too tight for it.

“They can give you an estimate, but don’t let them do any work on it,” was her parting shot as we saddled up and headed out. “Body work is highway robbery no matter where you get it done.”

“Yes, dear,” Jimmy said.

“We’ll just have them paint a few flames on the hood and maybe put on a spoiler,” I said. She threw a bagel at me, but we were already out the door.

Coney Island Avenue was a treeless strip of auto repair shops, gas stations, pizza places, discount stores, and commercial ventures of various kinds. It was nowhere near the beach.

I had pictured a dusty lot with a chain link fence topped with coils of barbed wire and a couple of Dobermans. But Hell on Wheels was all interior, a cavernous space like a giant’s garage. The wide doorway yawned, spilling darkness out rather than letting daylight in. A massive steel door perched overhead, ready to chomp down.

“Nice portcullis,” said Jimmy, ever the medieval knight.

He pulled the car up on the ramped sidewalk to the left of the open doorway. We got out and stood peering into the dim interior, getting our bearings. The shop consisted of three bays, each roomy enough for a couple of eighteen wheelers. In one, a guy in a faceguard— “Visor down,” said Jimmy, still in the Middle Ages— wielded a blowtorch spitting sparks. An SUV swam in mid-air on a hydraulic lift. From beyond it came a helluva racket that sounded like a hammer on metal with a lot of muscle behind it.

“Yeah, what?” The speaker was rangy and balding, his face pitted with acne scars. Once I saw him, I remembered him from the funeral.

“Mr. Gaglia?” Jimmy asked.

“I’m Sal. What can I do you for?”

While Jimmy went into his pitch about getting an estimate, I looked around. I couldn’t name most of what I saw. As a Manhattan native, I had never belonged to the rest of America’s car culture. To tell the truth, Jimmy and I had both learned to drive joyriding with older boys, a six-pack on the dash. God knows who I owed amends to for those excursions.

“Bruce.” Jimmy beckoned to me. “He wants to show us something.”

We followed Sal as he strode past the elevated SUV and whisked a grimy tarp off a sleek vehicle that had been hidden in the shadows.

“Tell me that ain’t a beauty,” he said.

Even I could see the car was a classic, low to the ground and gleaming with fresh paint and chrome. Half the length of it consisted of outthrust hood, no doubt housing a powerful engine.

“Sixty-nine Dodge Charger Daytona Hemi,” Sal said.

I gave a low whistle. He expected it. Call me a people-pleaser.

“Best I ever had is a Corvette,” Jimmy said. Like hell he did.

“Corvette!” Sal spat on the ground. “The Daytona’s a muscle car.”

“You said it. You work on engines too?”

“Only the ones like this baby.” Sal gave the Dodge’s hood an affectionate slap, then pulled a wild rag out of his pocket and wiped away his fingerprints with finicky care. “It’s a hobby.”

“More like a passion,” Jimmy said, “and why the hell not?”

“Looking for a deal?”

“Not today. My sister’s husband had a Daytona.” Right. Jimmy’s sister and brother-in-law lived in Patchogue and were putting every cent they could away for the baby’s college education.

“No kiddin’. The Sixty-nine?”

“Not as well restored as this one,” Jimmy lied. “Beautiful detailing you’ve done.”

“What happened to it?” Sal asked.

“The bastard cheated on my sister and then took off,” Jimmy said. “Left her with three kids and a mortgage. Traded her in for a newer model.”

“You can’t do better than a Sixty-nine Daytona,” Sal said. “Especially if you take your time and fix her up right.”

“Oh, he’s still got the car,” Jimmy said. “I meant my sister. The rat took up with a bimbo twenty years younger. Two years later and she’s still knee deep in lawyers, trying to get what’s hers.”

“Sucks.”

“Sisters are a big responsibility.” Jimmy heaved one of his gusty ACOA sighs. “Man’s gotta take care of family.”

“Tell me about it,” Sal said.

“Never too old to need pulling out of trouble,” a new voice chimed in.

“My brother Vito,” Sal said.

“Sir,” Jimmy said, extending his hand.

Vito shook. He carried the faceguard tucked under his arm and clutched the blowtorch and a pair of padded asbestos gloves. He looked a lot like Sal. A couple inches shorter, a couple shades grayer.

“Sisters,” Vito said.

“They gotta marry some scumbag,” Sal said. “Hope yours has got a good lawyer. Squeeze his nuts and wring ’em dry.”

“Or you could just hammer him.”

The brothers guffawed. Har har har. It didn’t last long.

“Sisters,” Sal said, glum again.

Vito growled low in his throat.

“Rip the fucker’s throat out.”

“So you wanna get the little Jap tin can back in shape?” Sal asked. “You’ll need new sections, but we can order them for you. Or are you interested in some real muscle?”

Vito tapped on the Daytona’s hood. Sal handed him the wild rag. No smudges allowed.

Jimmy sidestepped with a shtick about asking the wife that made the Gaglia brothers eye him with disgust and pity. We got back in the car, and Jimmy started it up. Before he could shift into reverse, Sal tapped on the window.

“Lemme give you a card,” he said. “If your sister pries the Daytona outa shithead, I could give her top dollar.”

“Thanks, man,” Jimmy said. “More likely it’ll end up he sells it and makes her a settlement. He won’t be looking for any recommendations from me.”

“Tell her not to take a penny less than half a mil,” he called after us as we rolled down the street.

I walked through the park, kicking at the mounds of fallen leaves. Barbara and Luz, one on either side of me, chattered across me as if I were one of those little tables at Starbucks. The air was soft and smelled of musty oak. I knew a guy who used to brew a homemade beer with oak leaves. He probably still did it. I hadn’t seen him in a while. Bar friends don’t meet sober friends unless they hit bottom and cross over. Jimmy was still my only real friend. Now and forever, amen.

Barbara had a hundred friends. No topic of conversation was
verboten.
As we dawdled along, she and Luz covered aging female relatives, boot styles, perimenopause, and the best way to cook a turkey.

I waited for an opening. Even Barbara had to breathe some time.

“Yo. Ladies. Luz, I want to know— are the cops still hassling you?”

“They seem to have given up for now,” she said. “I was afraid, but at least when they came around, I knew they were doing something. Now I don’t know if they even go through the motions.” She gestured like a temple dancer, rotating her wrists and fluttering her fingers. “I still want to know who killed Frankie. I need to know.”

I nodded.

“You want to shut the drawer and move on,” I said.

“Yes, that is it exactly. This way I stay—”

“Stuck,” Barbara supplied. “It feels like we’re all stuck. We ought to be going somewhere or doing something or talking to someone. The trouble with New York City is the container is too big. You can’t take the whole bowl of soup and swirl it around to see what’s on the bottom.”

“Not like a small town, huh?”

“It would be a lot easier,” Barbara said, “in a place where everybody in it has lived there since birth and knows all there is to know about everybody else, except for a bunch of secrets that come out when whoever it is investigates the murder, if there is a murder.”

Having used up all her air on one of her inimitable sentences again, Barbara drew a deep breath.

“There are still places like this?” Luz asked.

“Probably not,” Barbara said. “Americans move a lot, and families don’t live or even think the same from generation to generation. Too many options, too much television, and with the Internet, forget it— the kids growing up now don’t even need to walk out their doors into the street to find communities of their own.”

“This small town sounds like Frankie’s neighborhood in Brooklyn,” Luz said.

“Good point, Luz,” I said.

“Except we don’t belong to their little enclave,” Barbara said. “We’re on the outside looking in, which makes it hard to find anything out.” The corners of her mouth turned down, and she kicked at a Diet Coke can that had rolled into the middle of the path.

“Frustrating,” I said. “Let’s kill all the litterers, that’ll help a lot.”

Barbara smiled. Luz laughed aloud. Not at my feeble joke, I thought, but to please me. That made me happy. What was so bad about what the Al-Anons called “people-pleasing?” I’d have to ask Barbara some time. Or not.

When we reached the Great Lawn, I stopped to admire the pale blue bowl of the sky, fringed with the skyline to the south and the trees turning color and beginning to bare their branches to the east and west.

“I don’t think we have done so badly,” Luz said. “We have talked to a lot of people. Not just Frankie’s friends and relatives in Brooklyn, but his friends from rehab too.” She twinkled at me. I liked being twinkled at. “We have even discovered what we needed to know about his—”

Her forehead creased in a frown. She didn’t like talking about Frankie’s drug connections.

“His dark side,” I offered.

At the same time, Barbara said, “His other world. You’re right, Luz, we should think positively. Let’s brainstorm. Who have we
not
talked to, and how might we get to them?”

“It feels better to have something to do,” Luz said. “Brainstorm— I like this.”

“We haven’t talked to his friend Vinnie— the nice one from the funeral,” Barbara said.

“I didn’t think he was so nice,” I objected. “I didn’t like his eyebrow.” I waggled mine like Groucho Marx.

“At least he showed us around,” Barbara said. “And he didn’t blow the whistle on us. That would have been excruciating. I hate feeling embarrassed.”

“So you tell us. Frequently.”

“I hate feeling embarrassed too,” Luz said. “No, Barbara is right, Vinnie was kind. I had met him many times with Frankie, and he always acted like we were a real couple. I am grateful for that. He knew I loved Frankie, and I think he liked me well enough.”

“How could you tell?” I teased. “He always wore that hairy black frown.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, more comfortable with me than she’d ever been. Good.

“Let’s get practical,” Barbara said. “Could you call him? Do you have his number?”

“I am not sure,” Luz said. “It might be in my Rolodex. What would I say to him if I called?”

“We’ll cross Brooklyn Bridge when we come to it,” Barbara said. “One day at a time. How about Netta?”

I could see the anxiety roll back across Luz’s face. I glared at Barbara.

“You don’t have to talk to her, Luz. Nobody with any sensitivity would ask you to.”

“I wouldn’t ask Luz to talk to her,” Barbara protested. “I just meant one of us needed to. Who’s a better suspect than a cheater’s wife? Sorry, Luz, but from her point of view, he did cheat on her.”

“It’s okay, Barbara, I can face it. With me he was unfaithful twice over, with two women who had borne his children. I accept my— my inventory. I should have known better. I
did
know better, but I loved him so much. He didn’t mean to hurt me, but he carried so much rage inside.”

With a scowl, I aborted Barbara’s lecture on the cycle of abuse.

“It is a good idea to talk to her,” I said, “but you don’t have to do it. We’ll figure out how one of us can reach her.”

We scuffled through the leaves in silence for a minute or two. I could hear faint yelps, kids playing touch football at the south end of the Great Lawn. A very friendly golden Lab dropped a drool-coated chartreuse tennis ball at my feet and looked up at me hopefully, plumed tail wagging.

“Taxi!” The Lab’s person came panting up, a gray-haired woman wearing sweats that matched the tennis ball. “He doesn’t want to play, Taxi. How many times have I told you not to talk to strangers?”

The dog frisked over to her. When she grabbed at its collar, it circled back to me.

“Cute name,” I said. I let the Lab sniff my hand. That didn’t mean I would pick up the tennis ball.

The dog owner scooped the ball up without hesitation. The dog’s tongue probably spent more time on her hands and face than inside its mouth. When the Lab went after the ball, she lunged for its collar and got hold of it. The dog didn’t carry a resentment. It looked adoring and delighted as it pranced around her legs.

“Thanks,” she said. “Come on, Taxi, let’s go play with the fellas.” She led him off toward the big sloping field just north of the West 86th Street entrance, which serves as a dog run.

“I can do it,” Luz said suddenly. “I have thought of a way.”

“To do what?” Barbara asked, turning. She had walked a short way ahead. Barbara is not a fan of dog saliva.

“To see Netta. It will have to be me, though. You know that I work in the lingerie store.”