Two Jakes (58 page)

CHAPTER
19 – THE GADOMSKI BOY

The
next morning Scarne woke up with a hangover and feeling out of sorts. They had
stayed late at Arachne’s apartment and Scarne had become a bit annoyed at how
much attention their host paid to Emma. A couple of times when Scarne was with
other guests or at the bar he returned to find Arachne’s arm draped casually
around her waist. While he realized that his relationship with Emma was
non-committal, he couldn’t help but feel irked. She had tried to smooth his
ruffled feathers on the way home but, using her daughter as an excuse, didn’t
invite him in.

Scarne
put on a pot of coffee, set the timer, and then went down to the his building’s
basement gym, which looked like something Rocky Balboa would train in:
old-style weight benches and barbells, jump ropes, dirty floor mats, stretching
pulleys attached to boards on the wall, even a heavy punching bag hanging from
the ceiling. Some of the residents, used to upscale health clubs, wouldn’t be
caught dead with their $400 track suits in the room, with its odors of sweat,
mold and liniment vying for primacy. Scarne, wearing $20 Old Navy shorts and an
old Providence College sweatshirt with coffee stains, loved the place. He never
even signed the petition for a new facility, now moot with the impending brick
façade assessment.

Scarne
emerged from the room 45 minutes later sweating and smelling musty but feeling
human again. Back in his apartment he poured himself coffee and checked in with
Evelyn at his office while he made bacon and eggs. Then, after a long shower,
he called the two people named Gadomski that Evelyn had turned up on Staten
Island.

He
first tried Paulina Godomski, who lived in Castleton Corners. The result was a
fractured greeting from an old woman obviously unsure of how to use the device.
He thought about leaving a message asking if she had a son who was a hit man,
but thought better of it and just left his cell number.

The
other listing was for a Dr. Jack Gadomski, a vascular surgeon in Great Kills.
His office said he was making hospital rounds. When would the good doctor be
back? Sometime in the afternoon but he was fully booked. His next free
appointment was in two weeks. Was the problem serious? Scarne said he had
weakness in his left side, his right eye was twitching and he kept drooling on
his tie. The receptionist suggested that he go to the nearest emergency room.
Scarne thanked her, slurring his words for effect and hung up. He hoped the
woman wouldn’t recognize his voice when he showed up unannounced.

He
then opened his laptop and did a quick search for “Gadomski’s Bakery” on Staten
Island. He was almost immediately redirected to a website called
Staten
Island’s Halcyon Days,
which broke down the borough by townships and
featured scores of now-defunct attractions, restaurants, churches, schools,
lighthouses, hotels, movie theaters and other businesses. Each had one or two
lines of copy describing its place in the borough’s history. Some were
accompanied by grainy black-and-white photos. There was no photo of Gadomski’s,
only a street address on Victory Boulevard in Travis, and the notation that the
bakery, “a family-owned local favorite that opened in 1919” closed in 1970.

Scarne
decided to head to Staten Island again to check out the neighborhood where
Gadomski’s Bakery had once been. With round-trip bridge tolls to the borough
now in the $14 range, he was considering just moving there to save money.

An
hour later he found the store that had once housed the bakery. It was now a
salon called “Essence of Nails.” Inside, six women were sitting with their feet
in tubs of water, being tended to by three Vietnamese women. Another
Vietnamese, presumably the owner, came over to him and asked if he wanted a
“mani-pedi.” When he declined she said, “More men are coming in all the time,
you should try. We have special, $35 for both.”

When
he explained the reason for his visit, she looked disappointed but politely
answered his questions. She had never heard of Gadomski’s Bakery. She bought
the shop from the previous owner, who ran a small toy store. Before that, she
believed, it was a candy store. She turned to her clientele and said, “Any you
ladies remember a Gabonski baker?”

“You
mean Gadomski,” a woman in the middle seat said.

“That’s
right,” Scarne said, walking over to her.

She
was old, verging on ancient, and he tried not to look at her wrinkled and
blue-blotched feet. A worker was gently massaging the gnarled toes on one of
them.

“You’re
a detective,” she said.

“Yes,
I am, ma’am. Private. How did you know?”

“I
can tell. My husband and son were on the force. Both my grandkids, too.
Brooklyn and Queens. Girl and boy. Both sergeants.”

“That’s
wonderful,” Scarne said. “So, you remember the Gadomski’s?”

“Yes,
nice people. We’re Italian and got most of our baked goods from Alfonso’s, but
for rolls and donuts on Sunday morning you couldn’t beat old man Gadomski. Do
private detectives make good money?”

“Sometimes,”
Scarne said, thinking about the tolls.

“Where’s
your office, Staten Island?”

“No,
Manhattan.”

“Good
money,” the lady in the next seat chimed in.

“Maybe
when my grandkids retire, they can go private,” the old woman said. “You got a
card?”

Scarne
gave her one.

“Rockefeller
Center,” she said to the other ladies, holding the card up. “Real good money.”

“Who’s
he?” It was one of the other women down the line. “A private eye,” another one
answered. “What’s going on,” a third said.

Scarne
knew things would shortly get out of hand, or foot, as the case might be.

“Do
you know if any of the family is still around?”

“Old
man Gadomski and his wife passed some time ago,” the old lady said.

“Do
you happen to know what the wife’s maiden name was?’

“Oh,
Lord. I used to. Something Italian. I’m Irish, so they all sound alike to me.
It was a common Italian name though. Started with an ‘M’ I think.”

That
narrowed it down to about a thousand families on Staten Island, Scarne knew.

“Any
children?”

“They
had a son. Crazy kid. Used to hang around with my boy. Both were always getting
into trouble. Not that my Mario was an angel mind you. But he straightened out
once he went on the force.”

“What
about the Gadomski boy,” Scarne said, his hopes rising. “What happened to him?’

“He
used to work in the bakery, you know, after school. But he wanted no part of
taking over the business. Too tough. Old man Gadomski was up at 3 A.M. in the
morning. Got to give it to the Polacks. Hard workers. That’s when the kid came
in sometimes. I know his father was disappointed. There were no other children.
I guess that’s why he had to sell the business. Too bad. Nice man. Always sent
us nice cakes for the holidays, because our boys were pals, you know.”

“I
don’t suppose you know where the son is now.” Scarne said.

“Oh,
sure.” Scarne couldn’t believe his luck. “Jack straightened out, too. Went to
medical school and became a doctor. Got an office in Great Kills. Does very
well, I hear.”

Five
minutes later Scarne, deflated and now carrying $30 worth of hand lotions that
he hoped Evelyn could use, managed to extricate himself from the salon. On his
way to his car, he cell phone chimed. It was Paulina Gadomski. No, she said,
she didn’t know the baking Gadomskis. Her husband worked at Proctor &
Gamble in Port Ivory for 40 years before his heart attack.

“Just
as well we not related to the other Gadomskis. Frank is on a low-cholesterol
diet.”

Wonderful,
Scarne thought after hanging up. It looked like the jelly donut clue wasn’t
going anywhere. He considered skipping his visit with Dr. Gadomski, whose only
victims probably sued for malpractice. But since he was on Staten Island
anyway….

First,
something to eat. He drove up Victory Boulevard looking for an old-time diner
he remembered near Jewett Avenue. Not surprisingly, it was gone. He had passed
a newer Greek diner and turned around in resignation. He pulled into a parking
lot that separated the diner and a large office building next door. The grilled
meat smells emanating from the diner had all but eliminated his resignation and
he was about to walk in when the Verizon sign on the other building jarred his
memory. He temporarily shelved his thoughts of soulvlaki.

“What
can I do for you, sir?”

The
pretty young woman at the reception desk had the bright-eyed look and chirpy
voice of someone in their first job.

“This
was the old New York Telephone Company building,” Scarne said.

“I
believe so,” she said. “I mean, we used to be New York Telephone. Then Nynex,
Then Bell Atlantic. Now Verizon.”

“Did
you take telephone history in school?”

She
laughed.

“No.
But we learn all about the company in the Verizon training course.”

“First
job?”

“Yes.
How did you know?”

“Wild
guess. But listen, since you know so much about the company, would you happen
to know where there might be some old telephone directories stored? Going back,
say, to the 1960’s.”

“Sure,
in the museum.”

“Museum?”

“Well,
that’s what we call it. Actually, it’s just a kind of library or reference room
of sorts. Most of our files and stuff are all on computer now, but some people
still want their phone books, although I don’t know how long that will last. We
don’t keep a lot of books here, of course, just enough for walk-ins. I’m sure
they have a lot more in a warehouse somewhere. There’s a couple of hundred
books here, most of them from recent years. But they keep at least one or two copies
of every book that comes out, for historic value, I think. I know that the
public relations people sometimes bring some of the real old books to show kids
at schools and things. Only Staten Island editions, though. There’s probably
other books in other boroughs.”

“Is
the room open to the public?”

“Oh,
I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

Scarne
took out his wallet and opened it to his investigator’s license.

“Do
you think it might be opened for a good-looking private eye working a homicide
case?”

Her
eyes widened as she read it. This was turning out to be an exciting job. Scarne
didn’t want to tell her that it was probably all downhill corporately from
here. She picked up her phone, presumably to call a higher up for permission.
Instead, she surprised him.

“Su
Su, can you cover for me for a while. I have a V.I.P. to bring back.”

A
moment later an young Asian woman walked over from a back office and took the
desk.

“Take
your time,” she said as Scarne and the girl walked away.

“V.I.P.?”

The
girl laughed. They were walking briskly down a long hall.

“Well,
you are to me Mr. Scarne. And more cute than good-looking, by the way.”

Now
he was “cute” to girls of a certain age, Scarne thought. But he was impressed
that she’d taken the time to remember his name from his license. And hadn’t
called some vice president. He suspected that perhaps she wasn’t destined for
permanent reception desk duty or the corporate treadmill.

“I
feel I should know your name.”

“Chelsea,”
she said as they reached a door, which she opened and ushered him in. “Chelsea
Hinton. Here we are.”

It
was more or less a large, windowless conference room with a long table flanked
by metal bookshelves containing telephone books. In one corner was a small desk
with a laptop. Framed covers of vintage telephone books were scattered around
the room wherever there was an open space along a wall. The shelved books were
arranged in chronological order, with the older ones easy to spot: there were
fewer of each year and they were a lot thinner. Scarne stopped at the oldest
section and gingerly picked up a weathered volume under a nameplate that said
“NYTELCO-1929.”

“This
is as far back as the collection goes? I would have thought it went back to
1900 or earlier.”

“Staten
Island only got its own book in 1929,” Chelsea said. “Before that the numbers
were part of a citywide book. And before dial phones, most people just asked
the operators to find people.”

“We’ve
come full circle,” Scarne said. “I can speak a name into my cell phone and it
will connect me.”

“What
year are you looking for,” Chelsea said. “Or who? You never said.”

“The
who is anyone named Gadomski.” He spelled it out. “And the years, just to be
safe, are from 1950 to 1980.”

“Is
that who was murdered?”

“No.
But I’m hoping he can help me out, if he’s still alive. It’s a very long shot.”

Scarne
sat at the conference table and the girl brought over books in batches of five.
The editions from the 50’s and 60’s had numbers that began with letters. She
went over to the computer desk, opened a drawer and brought back a small pad
and a pencil.