Mitchell Smith (31 page)

Ellie’s mother came on the phone in her guarded way, as if she spoke into the mouthpiece at a slant. Clara had spoken to Ellie’s mother several times, and at length, very patient with the older woman’s complaints, avoidances, irrelevancies. “-Harriet and I understand each other very well,” Clara said, after one such phone call.

“She knows I’m shtupping her daughter-and she doesn’t give a damn. With age, we ladies do turn into bags of shit, don’t we?”

Ellie’s mother told her what the mayor of Buffalo had said on TV about the welfare problem in the city. -Th at it had to be dealt with. “-And none too soon,” Ellie’s mother said. “That unemployment, too. They just use it to strike and bite the hand that feeds them”-forgetting, apparently, those distant days when, the young wife of a union carpenter occasionally unemployed, she had found such assistance handy. This was, for Ellie, like listening to a stranger who had come to inhabit her mother’s body-that vigorous, sexual, amusing and untrustworthy young woman had been replaced by a caricature, aging, shriveled, and stupid.

Harriet-her voice still slightly distant-asked about the weather in New York, mentioned that Buffalo was already becoming cool, the leaves turning yellow, the price of fuel oil climbing thanks to that greaseball in Albany.

“I’m working on an interesting case,” Ellie said.

“Well, it’s about time,” her mother said. “I suppose New York is full of interesting cases. Probably a new one every minute. -You couldn’t pay me to live in that place.

The last time I came in”-it had been three years before-I thought I was in Timbuktu or something. I didn’t see a white face from Fifty-fifth Street down Broadway. You couldn’t pay me enough to live there. .

They talked about Gordon’s diabetes. “Sonnenburg says they might have to cut off his foot . . ‘. not right away, but someday. -They say Jews are good doctors, but you better be ready to pay through the nose.

Be happy to cut poor Gordy in pieces as long as he got his money.-Did Gordy give you that stuff about going on oral?”

“He mentioned that he wanted to-“

“Baloney-that’s all that is! That’s just baloney. You know he still doesn’t like giving himself that shot? A grown man more than sixty years old? He wanted me to do it. I said, ‘Oh-no! If something goes wrong, who’s 9 going’ to get in trouble? -Not me.”

“

“It’s probably just as well,” Ellie said, wishing she’d called her mother on the bedroom extension. She was tired of standing.

“You better believe that,” her mother said. “It’s his diabetes, and he can take care of it better than I can. I’m the one that runs this house-which is the biggest white elephant in the world, and an unbelievable waste of money. I measure out his meals-well, you saw what a pain that is. I do what I’m supposed to do, and that’s all I do. The only advice I’ve got to give you is, if you ever do get married again-which I guess you won’t, now-then don’t marry a man with bad health. I love Gordy and all that-but he’s heading to be an invalid, and what am I supposed to do, then?”

” I think you take pretty good care of him, now,” Ellie said.

“I take wonderful care of him. I think he could use a better doctor.

Ellen Cord-you never met her-has some sugar and she goes to a wonderful young doctor who doesn’t try and take her for every dime she has; she gets billed by his computer through h the clinic-and it isn’t 9 cheap; it costs a little more. But it’s a group practice, very holistic, and they give her free literature every time she goes. -I don’t care though, I don’t care. If he wants to pay through the nose with one of the Chosen People, that’s his business. It’s his money-if he wants to waste it, it’s up to him.”

, ‘How’s Tony?”

Well, Tony’s wonderful. He’s the best company a person could have.

-Whenever I’m blue, he just knows it i right away, and comes out to the kitchen and jumps up on his chair and gives me that look-you know? Gives me that ‘How ya doin’, MamaT look.”

“He’s nice.”

“Nice? Listen-people say Scotties aren’t affectionate? -They’re crazy.

They ought to come and spend a day in this big white elephant-this house is forty years old, and, believe me, it’s falling aparfl-With Gordy gone at the office, and me alone trying to show this retarded girl from the Catholic Society how to clean a carpet-you know? Shampoo 0-They ought to just spend the day, and see what a support Tony is. Whenever I’m bluethere he is, on his special chair in the kitchen, seeing that Mama’s O.K., seeing if she’ll give him a treat. -If anybody says that Scotties aren’t affectionate, you just tell them to come up here and spend the day at 121 Brush Street, and they’ll see.”

“He’s a sweetie-“

“It’s the only argument I know that there’s a God,” her mother said.

—You won’t see that in a human being; you can bet your bottom dollar on that. An animal’s love is the purest love there is-because an animal knows you. It doesn’t know about you. -It knows you.

And if it loves you anyway-that’s a terrific compliment.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not a perfect person. We both know I’m not perfect. -Who is? I probably shouldn’t have done some things I did. But Tony doesn’t care-I’m his Mama, no matter what.”

“That’s right.”

“Well-what are you up to?”

, I’m working on an interesting case.”

lood. You couldn’t pay me to live in that town. I hear they’re coming out to Queens, now. -How’s your friend, what’s her name . . . Miss Kersh?”

“She’s fine.”

,:Good. She’s very bright, isn’t she? -A lawyer?”

That’s right.”

“Well, she likes you a lot-if she was a man, you’d be all I set.

“What do you mean by that, Mother?”

“Time goes by, you know. You think you have forever, but you don’t.

-That job you have, Eleanor, running around with a lot of men with a gun in your purse, is all right for a young woman, you know. They probably look out for you. It won’t be so hot when your looks are gone, and you’re just some hard-looking old woman with no family, no kids. Nobody will want you around, then.

Thank God I’ve got Tony and Gordy. -You just remember I warned you about it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t…

Ellie went to the kitchen, the conditioned air cool around her legs, trying to think of something she wanted for dinner. Mayo, tired of crying for his food, now sat enraged, silent, still as an Egyptian statuette, staring at the space under the kitchen table where his food should have been, while she searched the right side cabinet for a Puss

‘n Boots tuna for him. There were several livers-no tuna. She opened one, spooned the stuff onto a saucer, put that down under the table, and threw the can into the trash.

The Siamese looked at his food, but stayed sitting where he was.

“Starve,” Ellie said, opened the refrigerator and took out a small jar of olives. “The caviar of the poor,” Klein had called them, and used to eat them by the spoonful.

Ellie ate several, then put the jar back in the refrigerator, and looked for something else. She’d left the herring and cream cheese in Leahy’s little cooler. It would have to be peanut butter, blackberry jam.

She heard the saucer move under the table while she was making her sandwich beside the sink. Mayo could hold out only so long…. He forgot his grievance after a few minutes, she supposed, then was puzzled trying to remember it-then went about his business.

She put her sandwich on a small plate, took a can of Sprite from the refrigerator, turned off the kitchen light, and left Mayo alone, finishing his dinner in the dark.

In the bedroom, Ellie put her food on the bedside table, turned on the lamp, pulled down the covers, piled the pillows up, and climbed into bed in her bathrobe. She lay there, her plate on her lap, took a bite of the sandwich, popped open the soft drink, and thought about the day.

It was the first time, in almost two years working with him, that she had seen Tommy let any serious perp take a walk. That was one thing…

and not the worst thing.

She had let people go before… was sure Tommy had, too, if it wasn’t serious. But this, today, was serious. And the worst thing was, it hurt Tommy so much to do it.

Ellie cleaned peanut butter from the roof of her mouth with her tongue.

Blackberry seeds.

Donaher … that fucking old thief. The young one even creepier. -it was the shittiest luck. The worst luck they could have had. Poor Tommy. -He’d looked scared to death while that thief was begging him.

Known he was going to let them go, was what that was….

The Puerto Rican up in the Bronx had looked asleep.

It didn’t seem like an awful death-go flying through the air like that.

She thought about Sally Gaither. -Sally would rather have died that way; that was for sure. And Tommy up there, giving those old farts a hard time …

making up, Ellie supposed, for letting Donaher go. Poor, quiet Classman. -To be killed by some morons like that just by accident. His mother, too. -Just as well, though, she went with him, if she was as far gone as Serrano said.

No one to take care of her anymore….

Ellie finished her sandwich, drank the last of the Sprite, and thought of calling Clara in Chicago … maybe read a little, then call later.

Or not. If Clara wanted to talk to her, she could call. She hadn’t called earlier, hadn’t left any message. . . . Susan Margolies could probably tell them both all about it. Probably had lots of dykes and queers paying her for advice-coming around trying to get cured. Or coming to her to get talked into being happy about it. -The old bag probably showed them around her apartment.

Ellie got out of bed, went out to the hall, took her revolver from her purse, and brought it back to the bedside table.

Why the hell she hadn’t thought of asking Margolies about Audrey What’s-His-Face … needed to do that, needed to get some kind of print report from Fingerprints, needed to call the M.Us office for the stuff from the autopsy, needed to call those people in Detroit-just in case Mr. and Mrs. Crowell were cuter than they seemed.

Just in case Mrs. Crowell, for example, had decided to do something drastic about her husband’s two-hundred dollar visits. -And then the both of them showing up with that lawyer … playing it very cute.

So-they had to call Detroit; maybe Tommy could call tomorrow evening.

She heard Mayo scratching in his litter box in the bathroom, got up to take her sandwich plate and softdrink can to the kitchen, wash the plate and put it away, and found the Siamese lying alongside her pillow when she came back to the bedroom. When she got into bed, Ellie leaned over, resting on her elbow, and gently stroked Mayo’s small, taut, rounded belly-cream-furred, soft as a breast.

“Did you have enough to eat?”

Mayo stared away across the room as she stroked him.

In profile, his muzzle was unexpectedly pointed, almost fox-like-the jeweled eye set like radiate-streaked topaz, split by the black vacancy of his narrow pupil-a funnel down which the world of light fell into the mazes of his brain. Ellie thought of painting cat’s eyes as huge structures … light eaters … beneath which a dying mouse, bleeding at the ear, fenced by small, damp, white stakes of fangs, was minor.

“You’re a fucking monster,” she said to Mayo, and bent to put her ear to his belly to see if she could hear digestion-Puss ‘n Boots liver.

Instead, she heard only the neat, slight, rub-a-dub of his small heart.

Smelled from his fur his faint, bestial odor.

Ellie wondered whether she was glad that Tommy had done what he had …

was not as strong as he’d seemed.

She lay back on her pillows, and wondered whether things would be different working with him, as time went on….

Her reading glasses on, now-never worn on the job, not admitted to-Ellie was reading a Regency romance when the phone rang, and was annoyed. It would be Clara.-It was almost the end of the fifth chapter, and she’d meant to turn out the light and get to sleep. Now, it would be time on the phone.

“El?”

“Hi.”

“I’m sorry to call so late. -I just got in from the most monstrous dinner … every single legal jackass in Chicago was there, and each one blew cigar smoke in my face.”

“How’s the conference going?”

“Oh, they’re just cutting up territory they haven’t agreed to any indictment pattern, grand jury scheduling, jurisdictions, nothing. It’s been bullshit, bullshit, all the way.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said. “I know you really hoped there’d be something for you………

“Oh, there will be, sweetheart. -I’ll get a piece of the action. If there is any action. Brave Henry has assured me of that. Said he would definitely talk to Halevy about our task force.”

“And you’re going to head it………

“So Brave Henry says. It’s not easy to believe that guy.”

“You’ll get it, Clara-you’re just a natural at that.”

“I regret to say, you may be right. -A natural nasty bitch prosecutor type, is what you mean.”

“No-I don’t mean that. I mean you’re good. You’re very good at what you do, Clara.”

“Well . . . what this natural prosecutor would like to do right now, is to commit various offenses against several state codes with you.”

“I know.

But do you care . . . ? Improper question-let me rephrase. I hope you do care, because I certainly do care for you. . . . You know, darling, two extremely unpleasant realizations have been clarifying for me, lately-no pun intended. Am I—,do you need to get to sleep, sweetheart?”

“No,” Ellie said. “-I’m fine.”

“Well . . . how’s that major case going? The homicide.”

“It’s tough,” Ellie said. “Nobody wants to come forward in a prostitute’s killing-everybody’s ducking and dodging-and we’re getting shit for support from the Department………

“Just the same,” Clara said, “-I’d bet on you and your attendant beast.

You make a formidable team.”

“Well … we may work it out.”

, ‘I think so…. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go to sleep?”