Death Will Help You Leave Him (17 page)

“She’s an artist. Maybe she shows in Manhattan,” I said. “One of those SoHo galleries down by Laura’s.”

Barbara’s mouth pruned up at the mention of Laura.

“Who wants to come with me to the wilds of Brooklyn?” she asked.

“I’m game,” I said, “as long as I’m back by four. I have to make the meeting. My sponsor’s qualifying.”

I registered Barbara’s smile. She had learned long ago to lay off Jimmy about how he managed his recovery. When I got sober, her controlling tendencies got a second wind. She tried to keep herself in check, but hey, it’s a disease.

“Luz? Coming with us?”

“I don’t think so,” Luz said. “I know it’s silly, but every time I think of Brooklyn—”

She held her clenched fist over her solar plexus.

“It knots you up,” I said. “I understand.”

“So do I,” Barbara said. “It’s not silly— you associate Frankie with Brooklyn, so the whole borough makes you anxious. You don’t have to come. Do something for yourself— a nap or a bubble bath. Or go to a meeting.”

“I have to go to work,” Luz said. “They have given me as much time off as I want. But I think I should go back. It helps to be busy— I don’t have to think about things. Also, I still have to make a living.”

“I don’t even know what you do.” Stupid of me never to have asked.

“I work in a lingerie shop,” Luz said, “on Madison Avenue. I sell, and I fit rich ladies for special undergarments.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “Accentuate the positive. Sounds like it wouldn’t be a good idea to visit you at work. I don’t have much call for bras and corsets.”

Luz laughed.

“I wouldn’t be embarrassed,” she said.

“Bruce would,” Barbara said. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “If we have to get back by four, let’s get going.”

“How come you have all this time to go jaunting around, Barbara?” I asked. “You’ve been awfully available for someone with a full time job.”

“Comp time,” she said. “I’m taking all those hours I put in when we had the audit back in January. We don’t—” She stopped short and made like a beet.

I could supply the missing words. For once. she’d realized before she said them that they would be tactless: We don’t get a murder every day.

Park Slope, along the western edge of Prospect Park, had gentrified more than thirty years ago. Its brownstones with their neat paved areas in front, pocket gardens, and retro Victorian gaslights looked comfortable and settled in. As real estate prices soared, the neighborhood had swelled, expanding from the three blocks nearest the park to less expensive housing farther west. I would have expected Carola to live closer to the fringe. How much of a living could an artist make? But we found the house only half a block from the park, where golden, red, and bronze October leaves were at their peak. Maybe she had bought in early. Or she might have a rental, half a floor or even less. Almost no one, even owners, occupied an entire brownstone. It would cost a fortune.

“This is nice,” Barbara said. “Too bad it’s too early in the day for the gaslights. I love to see the flames. Either she’s a lot more hotshot artist than we thought, or she has another source of income.”

“What’s our strategy?” I asked. “We don’t have a badge to flash.”

“She didn’t come to the funeral,” Barbara said. “She just sent flowers. People don’t always stay close to their childhood friends. How much could she have cared about Frankie? My guess is we won’t upset her.”

“So we don’t make up a story,” I said. “We go in and lay our cards on the table.”

“And what happens happens.” Barbara ran up the reddish steps to the top of the stoop. “Ooh, I like the knocker.” The oak door sported a scowling brass lion with the knockable ring between its teeth.

“Use the bell,” I advised. “Does she have a floor-through?”

“One name per floor,” Barbara reported, reading the row of labeled bells. “Number Two, Bugatti. She has the parlor floor— she must have another source of income. Should I ring?”

“That’s what we came for.”

“I hope she doesn’t have a day job,” Barbara said. “Maybe we should have called first.”

“You’re the one who said if she doesn’t know we’re coming, she can’t tell us not to come,” I reminded her.

Barbara rang the bell.

The intercom, a slatted aluminum box above the bells, emitted the rushing sound of an open line.

“Who is it?” a crackling female voice inquired.

Barbara leaned close to the intercom.

“Friends of your cousin Frankie,” she said.

After a prolonged pause, the woman’s voice said, “Come on in. The outer door’s not locked. You’ll see another bell by the inner door. I’ll buzz you in.”

I don’t know exactly what I expected, but not the woman who opened the door and stood looking at us warily. Her hand rested on the knob as if to slam it shut if she decided she didn’t want to talk to us. She didn’t look anything like Frankie. I’d have said she didn’t look Italian. But Italians from the north, from places like Milan, could have that ash blonde hair and greenish eyes. She was big, taller than me. She wore paint-spattered jeans with asymmetrical rips that they’d probably come by honestly, not tattered by design. A man’s shirt with so much paint on it she could have shown it in a gallery hung from her sturdy frame. Her feet were bare. No makeup. No jewelry except a heavy gold ring on a fine chain around her neck.

“Frankie’s dead,” she said. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“Just a few minutes of your time.” I cocked my head to one side and tried to ooze honey. I hoped she’d find me winning. To myself, I sounded like a snake-oil salesman.

Barbara played the card I should have led with.

“Silvia sent us, Frankie’s mom. Can we come in? We won’t disturb you for long.”

“Silvia Iacone is no friend of mine,” she said. Her face stayed shuttered. But she took her hand off the doorknob and turned back toward the interior of the apartment.

With a shove between the shoulder blades that would have knocked me off a subway platform if there’d been one handy, Barbara pushed me forward. She followed so closely on my heels that I had to kick her back a pace.

We emerged from a short unlit hallway into a room filled with south light. Spider plants hung from a bar across the top of the window. Philodendrons on strings meandered through the shadowy corners. The shaggy yellow and bronze heads of chrysanthemums squatted on the sill in blue-glazed ceramic pots. One wall was brick, broken up by an immaculate nonworking fireplace, very Brooklyn. An elaborate brass and enamel clock ticked on the marble mantelpiece.

“Nice clock,” I said.

“It’s old,” she said, “but hard to wind. I can’t even do it myself.” Her lips snapped shut. She hadn’t meant to get lured into social chitchat. Crossing the room in three strides, she folded her arms and stood staring at us.

“Take off your shoes,” she commanded. “Now, before you step on the carpet.”

Easier said than done. Barbara and I both wore sneakers. We wobbled like a couple of drunken storks as we stood there trying to undo our laces. I finally gave up and stepped on my heels so I could wrench my feet out of the shoes by force. Barbara still balanced on one foot, one hand on my shoulder and the other dangling her high-tech running shoe, when Carola’s greenish gaze bored into her like a laser beam.

“Are you the girlfriend?” she demanded.

Barbara dropped the shoe. It bounced onto the thick-piled rose carpet. Her fingers clutched my shoulder.

“No!”

She hopped on the other stockinged foot as she tried to retrieve the sneaker. If we’d been alone, I’d have pointed out that pride goeth before jeans too tight to bend. I leaned over, picked up the shoe, and handed it to her.

“Silvia sent us,” I told Carola. I met her eyes and tried to look sincere.

“We told you!” Barbara’s voice throbbed with indignation.

“You’re lying,” Carola said. Tough as a week-old bagel. “Why would she do that?”

“She wants to know why her son died,” I said. “Don’t you?”

I was fishing, but I’d picked a likely pond. I got the impression that Carola was more than a cousin who used to hang with Frankie when they were kids.

“Closure,” Barbara piped up. She had to play shrink. But the taut skin around Carola’s eyes slackened a bit.

“Stupid word,” she said.

“Necessary process,” Barbara shot back. “When you love someone.”

“What makes you think I love Frankie? Loved.” Her voice cracked on the last word. Yeah, Barbara got that one right.

“You’re hurting.” Counselor voice. Compassion.

Carola’s lips pinched.

“Who are you really? Frankie never mentioned you.”

“You saw him recently,” I said. I made it a statement, not a question. So she couldn’t just say no.

“A week before he died,” she admitted. “It was a Tuesday.”

So she kept track. We were onto something. Frankie was important to her.

“Are you a druggie?” She aimed that one at me. “From that rehab place?”

Yes and no. But she didn’t want my substance abuse history.

“And you.” She wheeled on Barbara. “If you’re not the girlfriend, what was Frankie to you? He didn’t have women friends.” She added bitterly, “I should know.”

“The truth will set you free,” I said. I don’t know where that came from. “We do know Frankie’s girlfriend.” We had made Plan A, be candid, when we thought she wouldn’t have strong feelings about Frankie’s girlfriend. But it beat Plan B. We didn’t have a Plan B. “The cops think she did it. We don’t. We’re looking for something that might change their minds.”

“Please talk to us,” Barbara pleaded. “You must want to know yourself. What would it accomplish if they get the wrong person?”

About half a tear escaped Carola’s iron control and leaked out the corner of her eye.

“Maybe it serves her right.”

“Sounds like the one you’re really mad at is yourself.”

“Oh, the hell with it,” Carola said. “Sit.”

I looked around. Instead of a couch and chairs, she had ringed the room with giant pillows in shades from pearly pink to a fierce magenta. Carola crossed her legs at the ankle and sank gracefully onto a cushion. Barbara tried to do the same. She ended up collapsing in a heap. Her knees stuck out to one side, and her stiff arms braced the floor like a barge pole stuck in the mud. She would capsize any minute if she didn’t watch out.

I lowered myself gingerly, starting on all fours. When my contact with the cushion stabilized, I tried to reverse to a sitting position, one cautious limb at a time. In a mirror that spanned the opposite wall, doubling the light and the sense of spaciousness, it looked like I was playing charades. What am I? Shelob the giant spider in
Lord of the Rings.
I had almost succeeded in turning right side up when my backside touched down, not on the squashy cushion, but on an unexpected protuberance. I fished out the object: a plastic stegosaurus, if that’s the one with all the bony points down its back.

As I held the toy dinosaur up, we all heard a wail from another room. Carola stood up as gracefully as she’d folded herself before and hurried down the hall. Barbara and I had a conversation with our eyebrows. We could hear Carola’s voice lilt in the cootchy-coo cadences almost everybody uses with young children. The wail turned to contented babbling.

We waited at least ten minutes before Carola came back. Her face looked more relaxed. Not so guarded. She even smiled. Jouncing against her hip she held a little boy. Blue T shirt, disposable diaper, dark brown hair. His face was hidden as he pulled at her ears and chewed on strands of her hair. Playful.

“Still here, are you? This is Edmund.”

At his name, or maybe just the sound of her voice, the baby looked around. He was sturdily built and almost toddler size. His eyes scanned me and Barbara with intelligence and a lively interest in these new people. The beginnings of a widow’s peak formed an arrow front and center of his feathery dark brown hair. His eyebrows formed little arches. I knew that face. I had last seen it decked out in baby blue too. Frankie had two-timed Luz as well as Netta. Did Silvia know she had an extra grandchild? Probably not. She thought Carola still lived in the Village.

Carola picked up on my thoughts.

“I couldn’t afford a place in Manhattan with enough space for Edmund. I wanted him to have plenty of room to play. The Village is no place to raise a child, anyhow. Otherwise, I’d never have moved back to Brooklyn. I don’t hide my address— I suppose you found me in the phone book.” Online, not that it mattered. “I didn’t send any change of address cards to Bensonhurst.”

“So you and Frankie—” For once, Barbara was at a loss for words.

I could see Carola decide that putting a good front on her behavior wasn’t worth the effort. Been there, done that.

“Yeah, we were an item, far back as I can remember. Frankie and Carola. Went together like a horse and carriage.”

She punctuated her words with mock nibbles at Edmund’s fat little fingers. Occasionally she pressed her lips to his belly, which peeped out between the T shirt and the diaper, and blew. Not a full-sized razzberry, but a small whiffling sound. Edmund liked it. It made him giggle.

“So what happened?” Barbara asked. “How come he married Netta and not you?”

“It was my own fault,” Carola said, “not that I wasn’t probably better off out of it. Marry in the neighborhood, you marry the whole neighborhood. They call a town meeting if you polish your nails a new color.”

I looked at her hands. Edmund was playing a primitive version of This Little Piggy with her fingers. They were stained with paint, and the nails were clipped short. Artist hands.

“And God forbid a woman has any ambition. I wanted to paint, and that meant Manhattan.”

“Frankie tried to stop you?” I asked.

Her harsh laugh startled Edmund. He reared back in her arms, then put a fat palm over her lips. She smacked a kiss into his hand. He smiled and nestled closer.

“He didn’t try to make me stop painting. He knew that much, even if he didn’t understand why it was so important to me. Basically, he didn’t want me to leave Brooklyn. Ironic, isn’t it? Nowadays I could paint in Williamsburg, if I still thought it mattered what part of the city I live in. We were very young. We fought, and I stormed away across the Brooklyn Bridge and signed up for the Arts Students League.”