Fresh Kills (17 page)

The pizza parlor was called 'At's Amore, and it had a big neon pizza in the window on which was a caricature of a man it took me a full minute to realize was supposed to be Dean Martin.

I laughed aloud; Artie Bloom, pulling his car into a space behind a teal-green station wagon, asked why. “When I was a kid,” I explained, “I thought it was the pizza pie that hit your eye.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's a song. From the fifties. ‘When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, 'at's amore.' So I used to think it was the pizza that—Oh, forget about it.”

The restaurant itself was a slice of the fifties here in the hard-edged dystopian nineties. Although, come to think of it, all of Tottenville seemed stuck in a time warp: one-family houses complete with fences and trees and dogs tethered to clotheslines; a little business district with mom-and-pop stores; nobody with skin darker than a Sicilian's, and well-tended front yards decorated with Virgin statues and plastic birds—Our Lady of the Flamingos.

I went inside, followed by Artie, and was enveloped by warm air smelling of tomato sauce and garlic. No fancy Northern Italian cream sauces here, no penne in vodka with yellow peppers, or squid ink pasta with morels. In fact, I suspected …

I opened the menu. I was right. The word
pasta
appeared nowhere; you could get spaghetti with meatballs or marinara sauce or plain butter-and-garlic. And the waiter would not spend three minutes discussing precisely how
al dente
it was going to be or detailing which region of Italy the grated cheese came from. We were talking plain Southern Italian here, no more—and no less. The sauce would roll on the tongue thick and oily, would stick to the spaghetti and linger on the palate, would flavor the pizza and coat the chicken cacciatore, would satisfy like no upscale yuppie Italian food managed to do.

I was hungry all of a sudden. Hungry for a slice of pizza with a thin but strong crust, melted cheese, zippy sausage. The place smelled like heaven, like the old Elbow Room Pizza Parlor on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, where we hung out after school, having driven across town for no other reason than that we had drivers' licenses and the keys to the family car.

“Are you Jerry Califana?” Artie asked, after we'd ordered and paid for two slices.

The man's eyes narrowed. “Who wants to know?”

So he wasn't in Wyoming after all.

“I was Amber Lundquist's lawyer,” I began. “I saw you—”

“Lawyer?” He backed away slightly, putting distance between us. It was the equivalent of placing a wreath of garlic around his neck.

“But I'm not,” Artie cut in smoothly. He reached his pudgy, freckled hand toward Jerry. “I'm a reporter.”

Jerry looked from me to Artie and back again, as if weighing his options. He gave a quick, decisive nod and said, “I want people to know the truth about Amber.” His big hands clenched into fists at his side; in his pizza apron he looked like a butcher; for a moment the splotches of tomato sauce could have been blood.

“That's what I'm here for,” Artie said. “To listen.”

In two minutes we were sitting at a front table, hot pizza slices in front of us, Jerry straddling a chair and leaning forward as if he couldn't wait to pour his deepest secrets into the boy reporter's tabloid ear.

“How did you know Amber?” Artie began. He lifted a slice to his lips and took a big bite, licking the strands of hot mozzarella that dripped from the pizza. I wondered how he was going to take notes while balancing pizza on his fingers.

Jerry sighed, a long sigh that spoke of a good deal of history between him and my dead client. “I was married to her.”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

Artie and I both stared at the man in the white apron. My farfetched theory that Amber had decided to save her baby from Scott's plans didn't seem so crazy now that there was an ex-husband on the scene.

“We got married when Amber was eighteen and I was twenty,” he went on, glancing at Artie to make sure the reporter was taking it all in. “She was pregnant, so naturally, I did the right thing.” He blinked his altar boy eyes, dark chocolate eyes that brimmed with remembered pain.

“At least it seemed like the right thing then,” he went on, looking down at the tabletop. “My mother tried to tell me about her, said she was no good. Even said she didn't think the baby was mine, that Amber was a slut and made it with a lot of guys besides me. I thought she was just, you know, being a mom.”

“You two meet when she was at Mount Loretto?” Artie asked, in an elaborately offhand way.

Jerry stared; a look composed of equal parts awe and street challenge: how come you know my business?

I gave my companion a silent nod of approval; Tottenville was about five miles from the orphanage. It was a good guess, and judging from Jerry's stunned face, it had hit the mark.

“Yeah,” Amber's ex-husband admitted. “I used to hang out over at the end of Sharrott's Road, by Prince's Bay,” he explained, as though that said it all. Apparently it did to Artie; he nodded and made a note in his steno pad. “She used to walk by the bay, and we kind of ran into each other.”

The stocky Italian looked down at the floor, and a dull flush crept into his cheeks. “It's where we used to make out,” he explained. “I can still hear the sound of the little waves on the sand.”

“Amber told me she'd had a baby before,” I prompted, since he'd stopped talking to look inward. “She said the baby died. That must have been very sad.” The words were inadequate and I knew it, but I wasn't expecting Jerry to tell me how inadequate.

“Sad. Shit.” He lifted a ham fist and brought it down hard on the little round table. So hard it shook. “You ever look at a white coffin the size of a fucking shoe box and know it's got your own baby inside?” His voice was ragged; his eyes bored into mine with intense passion.

“It was hell,” he went on, with the air of a man who knew the full import of the word. “One minute I had a brand-new kid, I was passin' out cigars like a big man. Next minute I'm standin' in the hospital with Doc Scanlon tellin' me it was a fluke of nature or some fucking bullshit.”

“Doc Scanlon?” I said, surprised to hear a familiar name. “What did he have to do with—?” I caught Artie's glare of disapproval, but I persisted. “Oh, he delivered Amber's first baby, too, didn't he?”

“What do you mean, ‘too'?” Jerry's voice rose, as did his color. “You mean that bastard delivered the new kid, the one that's missing?”

I nodded; it was public knowledge. No reason he shouldn't know what the
Post
hadn't bothered printing.

“I knew it!” Jerry burst out. He stood up from the little wire-backed chair as though remaining seated was a physical impossibility. He walked toward the back wall of the parlor, where travel posters of Italian cities hung in cheap frames.

“Knew what, Jerry?” Artie Bloom prodded. “You said you wanted people to know the truth. So what is the truth? What did you know?”

“I knew she sold this kid to Scanlon just like she sold mine.”

A moment of silence, bewildered on my part, greeted this announcement.

“I thought your baby died,” I said, genuinely confused. “And now you're accusing Doc Scanlon of selling it. Was there a second child?”

Jerry shook his head in urgent denial. He stepped closer to our table with every word, advancing on us as though to convince us of the truth of his words by physical force if necessary.

“No, no, no,” he repeated. “You don't get it. Those bastards stole my baby and faked the death. The baby wasn't really dead; they sold it to some rich couple and split the money.”

Wow. We were talking major paranoid fantasy here, and the wide, intense brown eyes told me he believed every crazy word he was saying. I glanced at Artie; his face was avid with the deep desire to believe Jerry—the scoop potential was enormous—but his blue eyes held a healthy skepticism.

“Doc Scanlon?” he said, letting his tone convey his disbelief. “Dr. Christopher Scanlon, who's on the board of at least six charities, who appears on television on behalf of unwanted children, who makes at least two hundred thousand bucks a year legitimate? That Doc Scanlon?”

“Yeah, that Doc Scanlon,” Jerry shot back. “That hypocrite. He and Amber faked a death certificate and pretended my Laura was dead when the truth was that bitch never wanted the baby and was only too happy to take the money and run. She hit me with divorce papers a month after Laura supposedly died.”

Laura. My first meeting with Amber came back to me: sitting on a hard chair next to her bed at the group home, watching her face go slack as she talked about the baby she'd lost.

When she told me she'd changed her mind, she said she couldn't lose another child after burying Laura.

And now the father of that child said Amber faked the death and sold the baby.

“Lots of people get divorced after a baby dies,” Artie pointed out with a shrug. “Doesn't mean they—”

“That's not all,” Jerry cut in, his words coming more quickly. Little flecks of spittle leaked out the sides of his mouth; he seemed determined to convince us by sheer speed if nothing else.

He lowered himself onto the wire-backed chair and leaned forward in the eager stance of conspirators everywhere. He lowered his voice so the secret would be heard by as few people as possible.

“I got the records,” he said. He was so close I could smell the garlic on his breath. “I got a copy of the death certificate and compared it with the hospital records. That baby was healthy as a horse the day she was born. The record says so.”

I was transported back in time to my earliest years as a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. How many clients had wandered into my office with shopping bags full of papers that were going to transform their lives, prove to everyone how they'd been swindled or done wrong? Jerry Califana had the same air of obsession.

“Then, two days later,” he went on, tapping his large finger on the table, “there's a note says she has a heart defect all of a sudden. Out of the blue. And we don't even get her home from the hospital before she dies. I never even held her.” The voice broke and he turned away.

Babies die. People die. And it's not always someone's fault. Even a lawyer, trained to fix blame, could see that.

I wondered if Artie Bloom did. Or would he use this man, parade his appalling delusion across the pages of his paper, feed his paranoia and then drop him when the story had run its course?

Then another thought struck me. Did this grieving man, weeping for a child dead how many years, hate Amber enough to kill her?

Damned right he did.

I could believe, with a suddenness that took me aback, that Amber could have been greedy enough, ruthless enough, to sell her own baby and fake its death. Elaborate, even for her, but I'd seen enough of the pain she'd inflicted on Ellie and Josh Greenspan to suspect that creating grief had been a hobby.

But Doc Scanlon. A man with a secure place in the community, a man who made at least two hundred thousand dollars a year without breaking the law, a man with everything to lose and very little to gain—why would he have aided and abetted Amber by faking official records?

As I gazed at Artie's impassive face, I realized it didn't matter what I believed. What mattered was that Jerry Califana had a bedrock conviction that Amber had sold his baby and put him through hell. And for this he had decided she would pay with her life.

“What did the baby die of?” Artie asked, then amended his question to reflect Jerry's delusion. “What did Doc Scanlon tell you she died of?”

“She had a hole in her heart is what the doc said,” Jerry replied in a morose, darkly suspicious tone. “He said it just like that,” the burly young man went on, “like I was some kind of dummy who couldn't understand big words. I may make pizza for a living,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning downward, “but I went to CSI for two years. I can tell the difference between a valve and a ventricle.”

I was still figuring out that CSI stood for College of Staten Island when Artie asked, “So which was it, valve or ventricle?”

Jerry Califana looked around nervously, as though worried that there might be a microphone hidden in the garlic powder. Then he wet his lips and said, “I could show you.” He spoke to Artie, but his eyes gave me an appraising stare. I wondered why, then realized it was one thing to talk to a reporter, another to slander a doctor in the presence of a lawyer. But Artie was his best hope of having his story told, and I was with Artie.

“Be right back,” Jerry said, then disappeared through the kitchen door.

I leaned toward Artie. “You can't be serious about running this story,” I whispered. “Doc Scanlon will sue your—”

“I know,” Artie replied, his voice a hoarse whisper. “But I've gotta see this stuff. Can you see the headline? ‘RIGHT-TO-LIFE DOC SELLS BABY, S.I. FATHER CHARGES.'” His blue eyes glittered with excitement; I wondered whether his fevered imagination was drafting the opening paragraph of the story or composing his modest acceptance speech for the Pulitzer Prize.

Jerry Califana returned with a black metal lockbox. He opened it with ease, his big fingers manipulating the lock as though he'd opened it many times before. I had a sudden picture of him sitting in a chair, late at night, taking each piece of paper out and looking at it, hoping to see something new, something that would clinch his case against the doctor.

The first item on top was a four-by-five-inch baby picture. Jerry lifted it reverently and laid it on the table, carefully brushing away imaginary crumbs before letting it touch the surface.

“She's a beautiful baby,” Artie said. I noted the use of the present tense; the boy reporter seemed more than willing to support Califana's delusion that his daughter was still alive.