The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (17 page)

Gina and I exchanged looks. “Isn’t there always?” I said. He picked up the envelope, ripped off the end, shook the photo out. He pushed it in front of us.

There was a woman in it, all right. She was dark-haired, but that was where the resemblance to Ronnie stopped. She had a weak chin and long hair that wasn’t right for the shape of her face. She was looking right at the camera. She was alone.

“Alma’s daughter,” Santini said.

I stared down at it.

“You thought it was something else,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Something you don’t want people to see.”

“Yeah.”

“Figures,” he said.

“Why?” Gina said.

He turned to her. Regarded her with a smile.

“Everybody has something like that, doll,” he said. “Everybody does.”

We talked about it when we got home. We talked about it each time we woke up, clinging to each other, in the middle of the night. We talked about it around six when we both realized there was no way either of us would get any more sleep.

I got out of bed and threw on some sweats and sat on the front porch wishing that just this one morning the sun would rise in the west so I could watch it. Gina came out at seven with mugs of tea. A breakfast blend, she said, from my box from the tea store. Eventually we talked about Santini some more. Didn’t come up with anything new. Then Gina looked at me and asked if I was having any doubts about my new career path. That I’d probably be meeting more fearsome people like John Santini and having more scary sit-downs at more seedy spots.

I said if that was the way things were going to be, so be it. We’d deal.

She smiled. She laughed. Me too.

Then we went inside and screwed like there was no tomorrow.

Gina left for an appointment at eleven-thirty. I picked up the phone, put it down, went out to the truck. I wanted the element of surprise. If my quarry wasn’t home, I’d figure out another plan.

Twenty minutes later I was pushing the doorbell at my father’s place. A few seconds later the door opened. Mary Elizabeth was standing there. She was wearing a robe. There was only one reason I could think of that Mary Elizabeth would be wearing a robe at my father’s house.

When you first learn about sex, the thought of your parents having it appalls you. It’s something you don’t want to consider. You wish you’d been dropped by the stork. Then you get older, and it’s not so bad. You’re an adult, they’re adults, it’s what adults do. Then you get to be middle-aged, and your parents get to be senior citizens, and once again the image of them sweatily thrashing about in bed is one you’d rather be without.

My mother died in 1968, and, though I couldn’t believe my father’d been celibate since then, this was the first time I’d come across evidence to the contrary. I wanted to turn and flee. Especially when my father came out of his bedroom, asking who was at the door, wearing only boxers and black socks. I hadn’t seen him without his shirt in a very long time. The term
silverback gorilla
came to mind.

“Joseph,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Why don’t you come in?” She’d picked up the
Joseph
business from my father, doubling the world’s supply of people who called me that.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It seems you’re busy.”

Her cheeks reddened, she looked behind her at my father, then back at me. “A few minutes ago we were busy. Now we’re not. Come in.”

I looked at my father across the living room. He was smiling. No, he was
smirking
. He was smirking like the rooster who’d just serviced every hen in the henhouse.

I walked in. Mary Elizabeth closed the door behind me. “Dad,” I said. “Go put some clothes on.”

“My place. I can go naked if I want.”

The Moby Grape song popped into my head.
Would you let me … walk down the street … naked if I want to
. “Fine. Go around naked. See if I care.”

“You’re embarrassed. Hey, Mary Elizabeth, he’s embarrassed. My son is embarrassed about natural body functions.”

“Harold,” she said, “you’re embarrassing me too. Go put something on. Joseph, you want some tea?”

“Okay.”

She put the kettle on and headed for the bedroom, grabbing my father’s arm on the way by. In a couple of minutes they both came out, fully dressed. By that time the water had boiled, and I had a pot brewing.

We talked about this, that, and the other thing for half an hour, until Mary Elizabeth had to leave for her volunteer job reading to the blind. When she was gone my father sat down at the dining room table with that shit-eating grin on again. “There’s life in the old boy yet,” he said.

“No one said there wasn’t.”

“Though, these days, once and I’m done for the night.”

“Can we not have this conversation?”

“Why not?”

“Because the conversation between father and son about sex was supposed to happen when I was twelve or thirteen. Not now.”

“We never talked about this before?”

“Not that I remember.”

“But you learned.”

“Kids do.”

“And you did okay.”

“I did fine.”

“Good.”

Silence.

“It’s getting pretty serious with Mary Elizabeth,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“You think because I’m doing it with her, it has to be—”

“Not that. Because of the amount of time you’re spending with her.”

He thought about it. “Serious, shmerious. I’m having a good time, she’s having a good time. You don’t mind?”

“Why should I mind?”

“You don’t think I’m being unfaithful to your mother?”

“Of course not. I’m sure that, wherever she is, she’s very happy for you.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“Heaven, I guess.”

“You believe in heaven?”

“I’m not sure. I like to think there’s something after this.”

“You believe in God, Joseph?”

“Does it matter?”

“To me, it matters.”

“I’m an agnostic, Dad. I don’t believe for sure there’s a God, and I don’t believe for sure there’s not one.”

He nodded, slowly, considering. “Good enough, I guess. So. Why did you come to see me today?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“Every time you come over I ask why, and every time you say, do you need a reason, and every time there is one.”

“Okay. There’s a reason.”

“Not to talk about God and Mary Elizabeth, is what I’m guessing.”

“I want to know about you and John Santini.”

“Who?”

“John Santini. Don’t play dumb. I know you know him.”

“Is he still around?”

“You know he’s around. I told you at Thanksgiving how he helped me find the woman my friend Mike thought was his wife.”

“Oh,
that
John Santini.” His lower lip was pooched out. Thinking, or angry.

“I hate when you play dumb.”

“Then I won’t. Yes, I remember you telling me you met him. I haven’t seen him since I got out of jail.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“No.”

“But you did know him before.”

“You know I did.”

“You worked together.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“That’s enough.”The lip was way out now. And he wasn’t thinking. That left one thing. “Don’t ever treat me like one of your suspects in your detective games.”

They’re not games anymore, Dad. This is my true calling. Aren’t you proud?

“I’m just asking a few questions. What’s the harm in—”

“You want to know about me and John Santini? I’ll tell you. I worked for him. Me, and Sonny, and all the other guys. We all worked for John Santini.”

He sat back in his chair. His arms were crossed. His lip had resumed its normal position.

“Are you happy?” he said.

“Not particularly. That night—”

“That night, the night when the fellow got killed, we were on a job for him.”

“Was Santini there?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Fuck that, Dad. You have to remember.”

He picked up his long-empty teacup, looked into it, put it back down. “He wasn’t there. He never went out on jobs.” He stood suddenly, began to gather the cups and saucers. “Got to get started on dinner. I told Leonard and Catherine I’d make blintzes.”

“It’s not even noon.”

“Blintzes take a long time.”

With all the dishware precariously balanced in his hands, he sped off for the kitchen. I jumped up and followed him. “Finish the conversation. There’s something about Santini you’re not telling me.”

He spun around. A cup went flying and crashed to the floor. “If there’s something I’m not telling you, there’s a reason. And if I have a reason, it’s a good reason. And if I have a good reason, I don’t want you pestering me for an answer I’m not going to give you. Do you understand?”

“I suppose.”

“Not, you suppose. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good.” He looked at the shattered remains on the kitchen floor. “Catherine will kill me. Those are her favorites.” He put the rest on the sink, opened the cabinet underneath, found a brush and dustpan. I took them from him. He began to protest, thought better of it. As I began sweeping up the cup, he started out of the room.

“Dad?”

He whirled. “Now what?”

“We can find a replacement. She’ll never know it’s missing.”

“Where will you find a replacement? Those are from when she got married.”

“On eBay.”

“You can get things like that there?”

“You can get anything on eBay. Or so Gina tells me.”

He nodded, started out of the room. Then he turned in my direction again. “It’s for your own good,” he said.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I said. “Everybody needs some secrets.”

Later that afternoon. Back out on my front porch. I had a pad and a pencil and a bag of almonds. I wrote down things I knew about Dennis Lennox’s murder. I drew arrows between ones that seemed to be connected. I kept changing my mind and erasing the arrows. After four or five the eraser broke off my pencil. I’d learned my first lesson in detection. Always have a Pink Pearl on hand.

I’d been out there an hour when Ronnie emerged from her house. She cut across her lawn and mine and without a word took the other chair. I held out the bag of almonds.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“What for?”

“For getting mad at you. No, for
staying
mad at you.”

I helped myself to a nut. “No big.”

“I think getting mad when I heard what had happened made sense. But ever since, I’ve known something that should have made me get over it. And I wasn’t ready to.”

“What did you know?”

“Dennis came on to every pretty girl on the show, did you know that? Cast, crew, girls with the caterers.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I figured he’d get around to me sooner or later, but I never thought—”

“That when you turned him down he’d do something really heinous to get back at you? You did turn him down, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. He’s not … he wasn’t my type.”

“What’s your type?”

“Less full of himself.”

“Like Eric.”

A shy smile. “Gina told you?”

“Yeah.”
Not to mention a reporter who’s been digging into your life.

Our mail carrier Rose came up the walk. She said hello, handed over the day’s load of crap, retreated. I looked the stuff over. Somewhere I’d gotten on a list as Joseph L. Portugal, and Joseph L. got mail nearly every day. This time it was frequent flyer miles if I’d just sign up for some credit card. Kind of wasted on a guy who’d never been on an airplane in his life. There was also a J. Jill catalogue. Since Gina moved in we’d been getting three or four a month.

“Let me see the J. Jill,” Ronnie said. I handed it over. She thumbed through. “He was a bad person, wasn’t he?”

“You don’t know the half of it. He had something to do with what happened to you and me that morning.”

“I know about that. The night he died, when he called me, he said he was sorry about that, and he needed to straighten everything out.”

“That’s when I found out too. His call to me.”

“This is cute,” Ronnie said. She dog-eared a page, closed the catalogue. “You’re used to it, aren’t you? People killing other people.”

“I don’t think anyone ever gets used to it. But, yeah, it’s not as big a deal as it was the first one or two times.”
Or three, or four, or …

“Eric says the world is better off without him.”

“Pretty ungrateful, considering the guy gave him what’s no doubt a ridiculously high-paying job.”

She frowned. Maybe I’d cut too deep. “Eric sometimes sees things a different way from you and me. Kind of from the outside of things. He says that though he liked Dennis personally, overall it’s no loss that he’s gone.”

“Maybe he killed him.”

The frown was gone. “He said the same thing about you.”

“Yeah? What else did he say about me?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“I really shouldn’t say.”

“If you don’t, I’ll imagine the worst.”

“He says you were the one who gave me whatever it was that knocked me out and gave me amnesia. Because you wanted to go to bed with me.”

“And then, because I was so happy with how well it worked, I took some too.”

“He said you made that part up. That you … did it with me, and then acted like you didn’t know what happened either.”

“But no one did it with you.”

“Theta
told
?”

“I wormed it out of her. Look. Dennis drugged us, undressed us, dumped us in bed together. End of story.”

“Because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

“I think so. But he wasn’t satisfied with that, so he fired you and let me take the blame.”

She opened the J. Jill catalogue again, found the page she’d marked, un-dog-eared it. “I don’t really need this. Tell Gina I’m sorry I messed up her catalogue.” A big sigh. “It’s terrible, isn’t it, not being able to remember part of your life. One minute I was standing there with Eric, and the next—”

“Whoa, back up. Eric was there? Then what did you need me for?”

“He wasn’t supposed to be. He went to Chicago for some family business. But he caught an earlier plane than he was supposed to and came right to the party. Though I guess I never got to introduce him to you, or if I did it was during the part I don’t remember.”