Palisades Park (31 page)

He went no farther than one of the thick columns supporting the lobby ceiling, behind which he hid until the desk clerk rang for a bellboy to take the envelope to Mr. Marques’s room. When the bellboy headed for the elevators, Eddie followed, slipping inside the car just before the door clanged shut. The bellboy got off on the fifth floor and so did Eddie, though he turned in the opposite direction … then doubled back and followed him to room 532. Eddie watched from around a corner as the door was opened by—Adele, her hair still in curlers. “For Mr. Marques,” the bellboy said.

“He’s not here right now. I’ll see to it he gets it.”

Adele closed the door.

Eddie had considered the possibility that Lorenzo might be in the hotel room, and was prepared for an ugly scene if it came to that. But this was much better. He walked up to the room, knocked twice on the door, and was rewarded with the gratifying sight of Adele standing in the doorway, staring goggle-eyed at the husband she had abandoned.

“Eddie!” she said. “How did you—”

“The Shadow knows,” Eddie said lightly. “Can I … come in? And talk?”

She balked. “Not a good idea, Eddie. Lorenzo’s downstairs checking out the equipment for the first show. He could be back at any minute.”

Hearing her speak that name, Eddie flushed with jealous anger.

“And what’ll he do?” he asked, his tone no longer light. “Call the management and tell them his assistant—who’s sharing his room and bed—is in talking with her husband? Contracts have morals clauses, don’t they?”

Surrendering, Adele stepped back to admit him. It wasn’t a sumptuous suite, just a bedroom and sitting room, nicely appointed; the afternoon sun bounced off the white sand outside and its light dazzled the windows. Adele led Eddie to a couch, on which were draped parts of a costume, including a ruffled green skirt. “’Scuse the mess, I was doing some repairs on my costume,” she said, making room for him.

“That’s pretty, what is it?”

“It’s called a ruffle-tiered train. It’s made of silk taffeta, I just love it. I wear it with this.” She held up a sequined leotard. “Snazzy, huh? And these shoes are three-inch peep-toe heels.” The shoes glittered silver in the sun.

“Nice.” His gaze softened as he watched her sit in a chair opposite the couch. “You’re looking—”

“Don’t tell me I’m looking good in my rollers,” she quipped.

“Okay, I won’t. But you do. How’s life been on the road?”

“It’s been great. Exciting. We’ve played two state fairs and a half-dozen smaller venues.” She sighed. “Why did you come here, Eddie?”

“Because I love you,” he said. “And the kids love you and need you.”

She shook her head. “They don’t need me anymore. They’re teenagers—almost adults.”

“Toni misses you. She still needs a mother.”

Adele laughed shortly. “Does she miss the way she used to scream at me and tell me she hated me? Oh yes, those were good days, weren’t they?”

Eddie looked at her and said quietly, “Don’t you even miss them?”

That hit her square between the eyes; her face hardened.

“Of
course
I miss my children,” she said, raising her voice. “I never said I never wanted to see them again, did I? Because I do. Someday. When they’ve stopped being angry at me for leaving, and I can explain—”

“Isn’t this really about you being angry at
me
for leaving?” Eddie said. “Look, I admit it—I was an idiot. Me and my stupid male pride. I spent two years as a grease monkey in the South Pacific, never saw a minute of combat—I might just as well have stayed in Edgewater at the Ford plant. I was wrong to leave you. Wrong to enlist without asking you.” He leaned forward earnestly. “I swear, honey, it killed me being so far away when I knew you were hurting—when I should have been by your side. I’m sorry, Adele. I really am. I am so, so
sorry.
”

His voice caught and Adele could see him fighting back tears. She’d always loved that about him, the way his feelings showed in his eyes like light through frost, and seeing it, she could forgive him almost anything.

“I … know you are,” she said softly. “But that’s not all of it, Eddie. Like I said in the note—I’m not getting any younger, I’ve only got a few years left to make my mark in show business.”

“What, by getting sawed in half three times a night?”

“Yes! It’s a start.”

“Only if you’re a two-by-four, for Chrissake!”

She wouldn’t let that rankle her. “I’m onstage. I’m performing. And I
love
it, Eddie, I love hearing the audience gasp or cheer or applaud … I haven’t felt this alive since I was a kid acting in my father’s two-reelers.”

Eddie sighed.

“That’s just it, Adele. This isn’t your dream, it’s your father’s. He’s the one who drummed it into you that you had to be a star.”

She calmly took that in, then said, not unkindly, “You mean like your father took you to Palisades Park just before he died … and now by working there, there’s a part of you who’s still a kid, and who’ll always have a father?”

Eddie looked away, embarrassed, at a loss how to respond to that.

Adele sat down next to him, touched him gently on the arm. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Eddie. Maybe my father did fill me with his unrealized dreams. But they’re my dreams now, and I want to live them. They make me happy. Happier than I was as a … wife and mother.”

He nodded. “Okay. I get it. But we…” A last, desperate try: “We could live them together, Adele. Travel the carny circuit, like you wanted. Come up with an act for you—”

She shook her head. “It’s too late for us, Eddie. I’m sorry.”

Eddie had run out of things to say.

“Lorenzo really will be here any minute,” Adele said. “You better go.”

Lorenzo.
It reignited the fever in him. He felt hot, angry, helpless. He turned away and headed for the door.

“Eddie?”

He looked back. There was a melancholy smile on her face. “Tell the kids I miss them and I do want to see them again. I just can’t say when.”

Eddie nodded wordlessly and left.

He took the elevator down to the lobby and headed straight for the hotel bar. Sliding onto a stool, he asked the bartender, “I don’t suppose you know how to make a Singapore Sling?”

The guy stared blankly at him. “A what?”

“Make it a Scotch and soda.”

The Scotch, as potent as it was, did nothing to alleviate the grim realization that Eddie’s marriage was over, that the woman he loved was with—if not actually in love with—another man. He didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to have to face the kids and tell them their mom wasn’t coming back. So he nursed his drink and felt sorry for himself until he finally roused himself off the stool and out of the bar.

On the way out he passed the hotel’s main dining room, outside which was a framed poster heralding the appearance there that evening of
LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT
and
FEATURING THE ALLURING ADELE.

Eddie stared at the poster.
FIRST SHOW 6
:
30 P.M.
Eddie’s watch said it was a little past five.

He couldn’t let go of her just yet.

He made a reservation for six with the hostess, then found a pay phone and called home, telling Toni he would be a little later than he had expected—careful not to give her any false hope for her mother’s return.

He returned to the bar for another Scotch, listened to a Giants game on the radio, then left at six for the dining room. The tables were fanned out around a raised stage in the shape of a seashell, backed by coral-pink stage curtains. Eddie asked for a table toward the back, then ordered a steak in mushroom sauce—the food, and the prices, sobering him up a bit before the six thirty curtain, when an announcer came up to the big floor microphone:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Traymore is proud to present that phenomenal prestidigitator, Lorenzo the Magnificent!”

The crowd, all but Eddie, applauded the entrance of the dapper magician, looking elegant in his black tux and tails. Eddie took in the guy’s pencil-thin mustache and slicked-back hair and thought he looked like an oily prick. But then, maybe he was a little biased.

Lorenzo started out with his usual card tricks, magically making a fan of playing cards appear in his hands, then shuffling them up his arm before making them disappear. As the audience applauded, the stage curtains parted slightly and out of them appeared “the Alluring Adele.”

And so she was. She wore the costume he had seen in the room, filling it out more breathtakingly than Eddie could have imagined: a strapless, dark green hourglass of a leotard with sparkling silver brocading; black silk stockings and silver heels showing off her shapely legs; and the ruffled taffeta train, a lighter shade of sea-green, fanning out behind her like a peacock’s plumage. Her blonde hair, set in a permanent wave, fell in soft curls down to her shoulders.

She looked beautiful. More beautiful than Eddie had ever seen her.

Smiling, she walked gracefully to Lorenzo’s side, then stood there with one foot slightly in front of the other, one knee slightly bent, looking supremely poised. She assisted the magician both passively—taking one silk handkerchief after another as Lorenzo produced them out of thin air—and then more actively as she mingled with audience members to assure them that the steel rings she was displaying to them were, in fact, completely solid. “Take a look,” she said, wearing them around her wrist like bracelets, then handing them to the people seated at the nearest table. “Go on. Look for a seam; you won’t find one.” The audience members agreed they were solid steel … and then, of course, minutes later, Lorenzo miraculously linked those seemingly solid rings to loud applause, as Adele watched with a smile. She seemed totally at ease on stage—as if she were born to be there.

Then, midway through the act, Adele wheeled out from behind the curtain a black wooden box on four legs that looked like a coffin. Eddie remembered the kids telling him about this, and his stomach tightened as Lorenzo gestured to his lovely assistant and said, “The alluring Adele has agreed to brave one of the most dangerous feats a magician can perform. You may never see her again as she is now, beautiful and vibrant with life!”

As Adele climbed gracefully into the box, Lorenzo winked at the audience: “If this trick goes wrong, at least she already has a funeral casket!”

The audience laughed. Eddie didn’t. Lorenzo picked up the first of his many long metal blades and plunged it into the box. Eddie flinched. He plunged in another, and Eddie found himself growing unaccountably angry. Again and again Lorenzo pierced the box with blades, as if the woman inside were his property to do with as he wished. Eddie bristled at every penetration, until there were at least ten blades perforating the box.

“That ought to do it!” Lorenzo proceeded to withdraw the blades, then paused dramatically before opening the coffin lid.

Adele sat up, smiling as if she had just spent a few minutes in a good hot bath; Lorenzo helped her up and out of the box. The audience clapped and cheered, and Eddie could see Adele basking in the applause.

After the reaction had died down, Lorenzo told the audience, “For my next trick I will need a volunteer from your ranks. Would anyone care to—”

Before the magician could even finish, Eddie’s hand shot up, he bolted to his feet, and within seconds was making his way toward the stage.

Eddie could see the queasy recognition in Adele’s eyes, but it was too late for her to get Lorenzo’s attention. With a few quick strides, Eddie was up and on the stage at Lorenzo’s side.

“Ah, thank you, my good man,” Lorenzo said, oblivious to the frozen smile and fearful eyes of his assistant behind him. “And what is your name?”

“Eddie. Eddie Stopka.”

“Stopka?” Lorenzo said, only now realizing something was not kosher.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

Eddie’s fist came up like a piston, cold-cocking the magician with a right cross to his jaw.

Lorenzo the Magnificent folded like a pair of deuces.

Adele put her hand to her head and muttered, “Shit.”

The audience erupted in shock and confusion. Eddie took a long, satisfied look at his fallen adversary and said, “Prick.”

He turned, and on a whim, took a bow to the audience—then jumped offstage and strode back up the aisle to the exit.

He smiled. It may not have actually accomplished anything, but it sure made him
feel
a hell of a lot better.

14

A
S
E
DDIE DROVE
HOMEWARD DOWN
Palisade Avenue, he couldn’t help but notice the long line of cars—black sedans and flashy limousines—parked on the street opposite the park entrance, in front of Johnny Duke’s restaurant. During Eddie’s time overseas, mobster Joseph Doto, aka Joe Adonis, had moved his gambling operations from Brooklyn—increasingly in danger from the New York District Attorney’s office—to the more hospitable business environment of Bergen County, where Adonis took control of the rackets and purchased a fortress-like home near the Palisades. Duke’s became his base of operations, and according to Eddie’s friends from work, the “store” next door with its soaped-up display windows was a front for one of Adonis’s casinos and bookmaking operations. It purported to be a record shop dispensing 78 RPM records from vending machines, but at least one curiosity-seeker found that the records it dispensed were worn smooth, worthless, as phony as the storefront itself.

More disturbingly, Eddie had been told by Bunty that Dick Bennett was now serving as one of Adonis’s top lieutenants, and that Chief Borrell continued to lunch regularly there, as did mob chieftains like Willie Moretti and his brother Solly, Thomas Lucchese, and Cliffside Park–based Frank Erickson, the biggest bookmaker on the East Coast.

Not my business,
Eddie told himself, and turned right onto Route 5 and down the winding hill to Edgewater.

When he got home, he sat the kids down and soberly told them that their mother wasn’t coming home, but assured them that she did want to see them again—someday. Jack seemed shaken but Toni immediately snapped, “Fine. Who
needs
her, anyway? We’ll do fine without her, won’t we, Jack?” To which Jack replied, “When will we be able to see her?”