Magic Hour (31 page)
"How often does that happen?"
"Not often. Even nuts get bored. They find new villains. So unless we get bogged down—I'm talking completely, totally stumped—we wouldn't do anything more than a routine check on a victim's distant past. See, nuts usually don't suffer in silence. They send hate mail, make threatening phone calls. And a guy like Sy would be smart; he's seen too many celebrities hit by psychos to ignore those kind of threats. Right?"
"Definitely. If Sy had thought someone crazy was out to get him, he'd have probably gone the whole route. Hired bodyguards, even. Sy had no physical courage."
That surprised me. He was so smooth. "Give me a for-instance."
Bonnie thought, rubbing her forehead to help herself along. "Like one time, we were riding, up in the Grand Tetons. Sy got thrown. Nothing happened; he wound up with a sore behind. You couldn't blame the horse; it saw a bear and got spooked. But he wouldn't get back on that horse for anything, even when I kidded him about being a scaredy-cat—which, okay, I admit might have not been my most sensitive moment in my career as wife.
"But it didn't take an actual event to frighten him. Sy could get scared by nothing. We'd be walking in the theater district and if a couple of black guys who didn't look like they were headed for an NAACP fundraiser at the Pierre walked by, he'd stiffen. Just a little, but you knew in the back of his mind he was seeing headlines: 'Producer Castrated by Rampaging Youth Gang.' What I'm getting at is, if someone from his past had been gunning for Sy, he'd have gotten protection. You'd have heard about it."
"Good." I went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee. When I came back I started telling her: "You know, talk about riding, my family had a farm when I was little. We kept a horse. Prancer. I haven't ridden for years, but—"
"What do you want from me?" Bonnie asked softly.
"I don't know," I answered, just as softly.
"Whatever we had ended an hour and a half ago. Just remember that. And no matter what happens today, what you find or don't find, I'm out of here by five o'clock. So I don't want to know that you rode horsies when you were a little boy. I don't want to hear about your first Yankee game. I don't want you to tell me how you got the monkey off your back after Vietnam."
"I told you about that? My drug problem?"
"Your heroin problem. You told me. I don't care about it. And I don't care about your alcoholism—which obviously made you forget you told me about your heroin addiction."
"What did I say about heroin?"
"Not much. It was when you were telling me about Vietnam."
"I told you about Vietnam?"
Bonnie said coldly: "It must have been one heck of a night for you, that you remember so much of it."
"I remember enough to know it was one hell of a night."
"Do you remember talking about why you became a cop?"
"No. I didn't think I ever really gave it much thought, much less talked about it."
"You told me how terrified you'd been after you got back from the war. Walking down a street, if there was a crumpled-up Burger King bag on the sidewalk, you'd stop short, almost panic. Remember telling me that?" I didn't say anything, but I couldn't believe I'd told anyone about that time; my heart would bang in my chest and I'd want to scream out, Clear the area! Clear out! Watch that crumpled Burger King bag! We can all get killed! "We were talking about how come you chose something potentially dangerous like being a cop instead of something safe, and you said, 'This will show you how irrational I was—I thought of being a cop as safe, maybe because I'd be armed. I was so goddamn frightened all the time.' "
"I didn't realize how I opened up to you, how I—"
Bonnie cut me off. "Well, it doesn't matter now. I want you to understand: I don't give a damn about what you did in Vietnam, or what Vietnam did to you. I don't give a damn about your drugs or your alcohol or your recurring nightmares. I don't give a damn about
you
. And while we're at it, I don't give a damn about your fiancee's long auburn tresses or her commitment to the learning disabled. In another ten hours—unless, God forbid, I happen to wind up in court and you're a witness for the prosecution—we'll never see each other again."
I got up and walked out of the room. I remember nothing about what I thought or felt. I do remember rinsing the breakfast dishes and sticking them in the dishwasher and pouring what was left of the milk into the container. Then I went back in. Bonnie was the same; maybe even more remote.
If she had been in a movie, they'd have had some lens that would make her look as if she was moving back, farther and farther. Eventually she would become just a point of light. And then she'd vanish.
"Tell me who had a real motive to kill Sy," she said.
"You."
"Who else?"
"Lindsay."
"You know what I think of that theory."
"I don't give a flying fuck what you think," I said. "She's on the list."
"Anyone else?"
"Some guy who invested in
Starry Night
, a guy from Sy's days in the meat industry."
"Who?"
"Mikey LoTriglio."
"Fat Mikey?" Bonnie's face got all pink and glowy; just hearing his name seemed to make her happy. She forgot to be remote. "I love Fat Mikey!"
"You love him? He's a bad guy. Mafia."
"I know. But for a bad guy, he was
so
wonderful. Well, wonderful to me."
"What do you mean?"
"He knew I was a writer, so he was convinced I didn't have the foggiest notion about how the real world worked. He became very protective. Asking, 'Sy treatin' you good?' I was always taking these ten-mile-long hikes through the city, and he didn't like it. Not one bit. He told Sy a husband shouldn't let a wife do things like that. But when he decided Sy couldn't stop me, he bought me a map. He marked all the neighborhoods he thought were dangerous in red. Oh, he called me Bonita. For some reason, he'd decided I was a classy dame, and he couldn't accept that I didn't have a more dignified name. When he heard we were splitting, that I wasn't asking for alimony, he called me up and gave me advice. I was so surprised to hear from him."
"What did he say?"
"He told me he admired what I was doing but that this wasn't a movie. It was real life, 'and in real life, Bonita, ladies whose husbands take a walk got to get lawyers.' See, Mikey was Sy's friend. His loyalty should have been to Sy. That's the way people in his world operate. But he went out on a limb for me, tried to get me to go to a matrimonial lawyer he recommended. And the reason he did it was because he liked me a lot. And I liked him. I mean, he was a
man
. The men I met in New York, Sy's friends ... they could get destroyed by a four-foot-two maitre d' with bad breath and nose hair who sat them at a wrong table. Not Mikey. He was bad, but he was real."
"Have you seen him or spoken to him since the divorce?"
"No." "Did Sy tell you he'd invested in
Starry Night
?"
"Yup." Casual, relaxed, as if I'd asked if she wanted ketchup on her hamburger.
Except I'd asked her about Sy's investors before, and she'd given me some crap about his being edgy about "the boys." But she'd denied any knowledge of who they were. I blew up. "I asked you about Sy's meat buddies before, goddamn it, and you told me—"
"Stop yelling."
"I'm not yelling!" I banged my fist on the dresser. I hit my loose-change dish, and a dime jumped onto the floor. "I'm talking loud." I stopped, until I could regulate my voice. "Tell me, Bonita, is there anything you don't lie about?"
"I didn't tell you about Mikey because he'd had a lot of trouble with the police in the past."
"Do you think there may have been a reason for the trouble?"
"Oh, stuff it. Of course there was a reason for the trouble. He's a criminal. Just because he wears zoot suits and sounds like Sheldon Leonard in
Guys and Dolls
doesn't mean I don't know what he is. He's morally reprehensible—but he's not guilty of Sy's murder. If I'd told you about his investment it could have meant big trouble for him, and I
know
he didn't kill Sy."
"Why? Because you did?"
"Yup."
"Listen, honey, why don't you do Mikey a favor? Confess. Say: 'Sy made me get rid of my baby, cheated on me, gave me the clap, burned out my tubes...' " No reaction. I could have been reciting my multiplication tables. " '...and dropped me like a hot potato. Then he came back into my life and turned it upside down. He didn't love me, never has. He just
used
me. Over and over. And here I am: not getting any younger, lonely, broke. So I got out my .22 I brought back East from Daddy's store and shot the bastard.' That would give Mikey a real alibi."
"Stop babbling," she ordered. "Start thinking. Does Sy's murder sound like any kind of Mafia hit you've ever heard of?" It didn't, but all I did was shrug. "It
couldn't
have been Mikey LoTriglio. There was no way Sy would have let things get to the point of offending Il Tubbo; he was afraid of him."
"I thought he and Mikey were friends."
"They were. Sort of. See, part of Sy, the cosmopolitan part, loved knowing someone who was connected, who could tell stories about how Jimmy the Nunz put Tony Tomato and his Lincoln Continental in the East River to see if they would float. And the ruthless part of Sy ... well, having a boyhood friend like Fat Mikey was a potential business asset. But Sy's New York nervous-Nellie part was afraid of being with a man who carried a gun, someone who could order men hurt or killed. Sy was as afraid of potential violence as of real violence. He was the ultimate urban neurotic; he couldn't distinguish between a threat and an act. So no matter what it was, Sy
always
deferred to Mikey. I mean, we'd go out to dinner with Mikey and his wife or Mikey and his girlfriend, and Sy, who was the world's biggest, pickiest pain in a restaurant, would let Mikey order for him. He'd wind up eating what must have been fried goldfish or lard in marinara sauce because Mikey said, 'You'll love this, Sy.' So trust me on this one: If Mikey was upset that his investment was going sour, Sy would have taken out his wallet and paid Mikey back right then and there. Double."
"We're talking a million-buck investment."
"That wouldn't be a problem for Sy. He was probably worth ten or fifteen million."
I shook my head. "Forty-five big ones." Bonnie looked astonished. "You could have had a nice chunk."
But she didn't seem interested in history. "Who inherits his money?" she asked. "His parents both died."
"No one. He has some sort of charitable foundation set up. For the arts."
Bonnie got up off the bed and lay facedown on the floor. She started doing push-ups, counting softly to herself. "I don't like your list of suspects," she said after forty-five. She wasn't at all winded.
"Why should you? You're on it."
Maybe she and I were doing business, but I still wanted to keep my business private. Plus she'd passed sixty push-ups, which was more than I could do, and showed no signs of stopping; I figured I didn't have to be around to watch her hit a hundred.
I went into the kitchen and called Thighs, told him to track down Mikey; I had a couple more questions.
Then I woke up Germy on
Transvaal
, ASAP. He told me I sounded better. I told him I was. He said he was driving out to Bridgehampton around noon, and to drop by over the weekend if I could. Bring my girl. I said I'd try. He'd just gotten a copy of a beautifully edited video about DiMaggio that hadn't been released yet. He'd bring it out.
I called Robby. According to Freckled Cleavage, he'd left for work
hours
ago. Which probably meant he'd just lifted the garage door. I called back Thighs; he said he'd been in since six-thirty and hadn't seen or heard from Robby.
Then I called Lindsay's agent, Eddie Pomerantz, who had a house in East Hampton. I told him I'd be over in an hour. He said, Today isn't good, and in fact my whole weekend is booked solid, and I said, Have your attorney call me within the next ten minutes and he said, Awright, see you in an hour.
I called Lynne. She said she'd been thinking about me, and I said I'd been thinking about her. She was going to be home most of the day, going over the psychological evaluations of her kids for next year. I said I'd try and drop over, but not to hold her breath until I got there. She said she wouldn't, but it would be lovely if I could find a few minutes.
I thought, I'll have a wife and kids. I'll be happy. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life longing for what Bonnie gave me.
When I went back into the bedroom, Bonnie was sitting on the bed again, cross-legged, seemingly communing with her feet. She didn't look up. "Listen," I said, "about before. I'm sorry when I was ribbing you about killing Sy that I brought up..."
"My sterility."
"Yeah. You know I go for the jugular. It was in bad taste."
"Actually, it was beyond bad taste. It was cruel."
"I apologize."
"Fine," she said to her nicely arched soles. "Okay, let's get back to work. Any other theories? Random thoughts?"
"Like what?"
"I've been thinking about Sy. I know I told you he didn't seem worried, upset, anything like that. But on the other hand: he wasn't a hundred percent himself." She paused. "I feel uncomfortable talking about sex, but the last time we did it ... he wasn't there. I mean, he was okay in the performance department, although that in itself doesn't mean a lot; Sy's equipment wasn't wired to his brain. But he wasn't concentrating on me. And that was such a critical thing for him, tuning in on precisely what a woman wanted and fulfilling that want. It was much more important than the physical act itself. But all of a sudden, it was strictly mechanical. Like he had some extra time because he'd changed his plane reservation, so he called and had me come over. But when I got there, he was an actor walking through a part that didn't interest him. He did what he had to do, but his mind was someplace else."
