Basil Instinct (18 page)

Then he delivered as fine a Brando impression as you’re likely to see, complete with the famous Corleone hoarse, nasal underbite. “I sense you are disrespecting me, boys,” he uttered with half-lowered eyelids. They answered in a series of sputters and gags that went completely over the heads of the rest of us.

“Today is the Feast Day of Little Serena, the patron saint of Space Mountain. So I am willing to
overlook your disrespect”—this was met with more sputters and gags, which Don Lolo shushed with puckered lips—“your disrespect to me, but you must never disrespect my
bellissima cugina
[most beautiful cousin] Eve, or”—his eyes slew fractionally to my left—“my goddaughter Corabeth. This”—he affectionately ruffled Corabeth’s Shrek ’do, and his voice got very faraway—“is a special relationship. Do we understand each other?” He looked them over with his most reptilian expression. “It pains me to think what I should have to do if you try to set them, oh, on fire, or paint disrespectful portraits of them on the side of a restaurant where the saltimbocca is particularly good. For these places,” said he, sagely, “are hard to find. Do we understand each other?”

Mitchell and Slash, wide-eyed, nodded dumbly.

I was hoping Don Lolo’s point was sufficiently clear, because at that moment the front door to Cottage Three opened and a brawl spilled out. The cheering squad was so mixed up with the fighters that it was hard to tell what was going—until one of the ones in blue jeans and a darker blue T-shirt turned out to be a child-care worker trying to break it all up.

Before this guy could decide any strangers hanging with the likes of Mitchell Terranova and Slash Kipperman warranted closer attention, Choo
Choo swiftly eased himself back into his limo throne and I took a quick opportunity to get in the face of my two least favorite students ever in all my days of teaching.

“Where’s the red purse?”

“Swear to God we don’t have it!”

“Don’t make me tell on you to Don Lolo.”
Tell on you?

“No, really, Miz Angelotta—”

“And by the way,” said the other one, his watery eyes skidding over to the inscrutable privacy glass of the limo, “really sorry about that whole spray paint . . . incident.”

“We don’t have it. We found it outside in the back behind the restaurant a couple of days ago when we were casing—”

Slash elbowed him with gritted teeth behind a quavery smile. “While we were hanging around trying to get a peek at you.”

And they must think I was born—forget yesterday— just after breakfast. I grunted. “Where’s the purse now?”

Mitchell waved his scrawny arms like he was trying to get airborne. “We ditched it.”

“Word.”

White boys just can’t pull that off.

“After we dumped it out and kept the money.”

“Where?”

Corabeth kicked Slash’s shin. “That’s Georgia’s purse, you jackasses. Did you kill her for it?”

At that the boys grabbed each other. I would have preferred the righteous Ms. Potts to keep that piece of information to herself, but their reaction was totally worth blowing the element of surprise. Suddenly they were two little snotty, burpy, blankie-toting kids who were as scared of
l’uomo nero
as Landon and I had been. “
Killed?”
Mitchell choked out.

The brawl was breaking up but threats were still getting lobbed pretty freely. A couple of them started to walk it off— and in our direction. Time’s up. “Listen,
Terrarium
, and you, too,
Kippers
”
—
I was just in the mood to make up really stupid nicknames, knowing I had the full force of Don Lolo Dinardo sprawling with some Cheetos out of view behind me—“I want that red purse, and I want it by”—I pretended to consult my wristwatch, then had a brainstorm—“six o’clock tonight.” They started falling all over themselves, protesting that they couldn’t possibly—and here it got murky because one said they dumped it in a Dumpster behind Kroger’s and the other said they shoved it down a storm sewer.

Corabeth rolled her eyes. “Guaranteed it’s under the bed of one of them.”

*   *   *

“Are we good,
cara
?” asked Don Lolo when I got out back at my place. He was leaning against the driver’s door, brushing Cheetos off his sinister black shirt. Little billows of mist were lifting from the acreage behind my sweet little house on wheels.

“We’re good, Chooch.” We gave each other a rib-crushing hug, then he chuckled and climbed behind the wheel. I shut the door as the window noiselessly slid down. I asked him if he’d seen Landon, but he shook his head no. Patting the flawless black paint job on the limo’s door frame, I said, “Tell Junior I said hey.”

Choo Choo, the world’s worst matchmaker, piped up. “You know he loves you,” he reminded me, his voice full of reproof. It seemed to slip my cousin’s mind that Junior Bevilacqua had sired five
children in five different states and had every intention of paying child support—
word
, as Slash the K would say—but he just had “all these friggin’ expenses.” Like getting the limo fleet detailed with disturbing frequency and like child support was something different from expenses.

“I don’t need his love,” I said with a laugh. “Just his car.”

“I might not want to tell him that.”

“You might not.”

*   *   *

I swung by Miracolo, sighing at the sight of the yellow crime-scene tape, not to mention a small crowd that included someone I recognized as a reporter for the Philly
Inquirer
. For one split second it made me crave a real Don Lolo who could, oh, discourage with an airy wave of a bejeweled hand (holding an automatic) any unwanted attention from the press. Just how long could I avoid the reporters?

And pressing her nose against the glass of the front door, there was complicated little Akahana, who pondered consciousness as she dug daily through Quaker Hills trash cans for treasures both edible and otherwise. And when I realized that standing next to her was the unsinkable Dana Cahill, I gunned the Volvo and practically did a
wheelie turning onto Callowhill Street. The presence of Dana was bad news since I didn’t put it past her to hand the reporter a line of the most fictitious stuff about the death of Georgia Payne.

More at loose ends than I’d felt since four years ago when my leg cast came off and I was clearly going to have to come up with a plausible Plan B, what with a dance career that was nowhere in sight, I drove south out of town. At Innerlight Estates, the swank condo complex where my beloved cousin Landon lived, made possible by the dough inherited from his dad, my uncle Dominic, I parked right in front of his unit, got out of the car, and looked around. Towering locusts, ornamental pear and cherry trees, urns of blooms so unusual I couldn’t even name them—even the grass knew better than to go rogue and sprout weedy aberrations. Rain still glistened on all of it, and the sun wasn’t strong enough to dry it up.

My eyes glanced up at what I knew was Landon’s window on the second floor. It was open but, behind the screen, dark even in the daylight. It was the window to the master bedroom. I performed my foolproof—and Landon proof—test. “Vaughn!” I called up to the window. If his handsome tabby self didn’t appear at the window, Landon was home and providing enough wet food and games of fetch that Vaughn could ignore me. But if he popped
into view and meowed, he was perishing of want of some sort because the human was off being irresponsible somewhere, working his job, say, and mine was a voice he recognized as someone being adept with a can opener.

“Vaughn!” I called again. Then I waited. When no Vaughn appeared in the window, I knew Landon was home. Home, and out of touch. And probably within earshot of my hollering for Vaughn. For a couple of minutes, all I could do was sigh and stare. What was going on with him? Then I pulled out my phone and called him. It went straight to voice mail.

It was one thing if Landon Angelotta needed a break from the world.

It was another thing altogether if he needed a break from me.

*   *   *

In the Miracolo world of June 21, Choo Choo Bacigalupo was a goodfella, Landon Angelotta was MIA, Joe Beck was calling me “honey,” Maria Pia was heading for a retreat center, and I was threatening my students in more eye makeup than I’d worn since leaving the Broadway cast of
Mary Poppins
. None of these sudden changes in my known world compared to what greeted me when I walked into Jolly’s Pub across the street from Miracolo just shy of 3 p.m.

Behind the bar was Giancarlo Crespi, our devoted elderly bartender.

I had to do a double take. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him out of the Miracolo “uniform” of white shirt and black pants, over which he chose to wear a red-and-black embroidered vest. But standing there behind Reginald Jolly’s bar he was wearing a black shirt, silver tie, and gray pants. And in the space of half a day he had gotten an earlobe pierced. Maybe Maria Pia’s
B
tattoo had inspired him to think outside the pine box.

All thoughts of Mrs. Crawford fled my mind as I stalked right up to the bar. “Giancarlo,” I said, riveting him with my best incredulous look, “what in the name of Vieux Pontarlier”—his favorite absinthe, that herb and anise liqueur with the 130 proof—“are you doing here?”

Our dear old Giancarlo, who may or may not have seduced Maria Pia a century ago, pulled himself up tall at five foot six. “I am supplementing my Social Security.”

I blustered, “But you supplement your Social Security with us!”

A steady hand smoothed his thin comb-over. “That may be as it is”—he inclined his Genovese head at me a fraction—“but we are closed, and my expenses . . .” Here he made the vague Italian one-handed gesture that has something to do with
both the incomprehensibility of man’s place in the scheme of things, and indigestion.

“Are what?” At the sound of my bark, I reminded myself of Paulette.

He got prissy. “Are not inconsiderable.”

I was quietly shocked at myself that I never wondered about Giancarlo’s life outside Miracolo. He always just showed up for work on time, did a fine job, didn’t aggravate me—in fact, I decided to make him Employee of the Month. Just as soon as we start up the program. Did this old man’s life really consist of something more than renting a third-floor room somewhere in Quaker Hills, taking the bus, watching PBS on his forty-two-inch flat-screen TV, and eating leftovers from the Miracolo kitchen? Shame on me.

“Well,” I said kind of anxiously, “you’ll be coming back when we reopen in a day or two, right?” He actually seemed to be thinking it over. Like a resounding “Yes” wasn’t automatic. My voice got higher. “Right, Giancarlo?”

Finally, he answered, “If she wants me.”

She? Could only be Maria Pia. “Of course she wants you!” Then I realized how that sounded. “Back!” Then I realized it wasn’t entirely an improvement. “To tend bar!”

Giancarlo straightened his two thins arms and leaned against the bar. “The human heart,” he
shook his head sadly, “can only take just so much, then . . .” And mild little Giancarlo Crespi made a quick strangling gesture with both his hands and a sound like something juicy was getting way too squeezed. Either he was telling me in so many words what he’d like to do to my nonna’s throat, or he was demonstrating what happens to the human heart pushed beyond its limits. On the record, I was hoping for the latter.

“Giancarlo,” I said, wide-eyed, “we need you.”

“Reginaldo pays me better.”

Poker face, poker face, Angelotta. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

He looked me straight in the eye—at that moment I discovered Giancarlo had his very own poker face—the man was full of surprises— and then said, “What can I get you?”

Glumly, I ordered a seltzer with a lime twist. While he spritzed the seltzer into a glass, I bent to get a closer look. “Are you wearing a fake in that ear?”

He glanced up. “It’s a sticker,” he explained, adding, “I didn’t want to commit.”

With great dignity, I told him, “I will take that as a positive sign.” Then I took my drink and shuffled over to one of the café tables in the empty pub.

11

When Mrs. Crawford walked in, it was like a scene from a moody, backlit movie. She stood in the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the indoors, her hand floating up to her wide-brimmed picture hat. As she started across the room to my table, I saw she was back to her hot-pink cocktail dress, matching shoes, and chapeau adorned with a row of well-behaved tea roses. A day off from piano duties at Miracolo seemed to bring the blushing tea roses straight on down to her cheeks. Was she wearing bright blue contact lenses? Apparently murder brings out the experimental in otherwise dependable people . . .

“Eve,” she intoned in her deep, soft voice.

“Mrs. Crawford,” I acknowledged her. I gestured to the other chair and lifted my chin at her. “May I buy you a drink?”

We narrowed our eyes at each other. Mine were narrow because I was hoping to hell she didn’t think this was a date. Hers were narrow because she was hoping to hell I didn’t think this was a date. So, we were good. “Anyhow,” I continued. “Something?”

She agreed to what I myself had ordered, and after I mooned over the slipping-away Giancarlo as he made the drink, I sat back down. A quick check showed me “Reginaldo” was nowhere around. Shame. I’d be interested in seeing what happened in Jolly’s Pub when Reginald and Mrs. Crawford met each other.

Overhead—in the silence created by Mrs. Crawford and me, twizzling our sticks reflectively—the piped-in music was finally heard. Just then Linda Ronstadt was wondering when she would be loved. Get behind me, Linda. I twizzled my stick even harder, rapping it noisily against the side of the glass. Finally, I looked at our pianist, who wasn’t wearing stick-on earrings. “So, Mrs. C., what have you got?” Her teaser had something to do with who Georgia Payne really was, that much I remembered. Had Georgia sold her some fake calfskin gloves at Bloomingdale’s? What?

Mrs. Crawford kept her eyes on me while she slipped one hand into her summer straw purse big enough to take watermelons to market and drew out a little jar of . . . Bag Balm. A moisturizer for
farmers with hands made rough by repeated contact with cow udders. Mrs. C. unscrewed the jar and started to rub some of the goop into her elbows. I kept a neutral expression on my puss while she painstakingly moisturized. Finally, she spoke. “In my field,” she said kind of expansively, “you take all sorts of gigs.”