Mitchell Smith (48 page)

There was no money in the kitchen when the police were there. -How much money did Sally keep?”

“It’s almost time for my shot.”

“Audrey-how much money did Sally keep?”

“Are you touchin’ my arm?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” Ellie took her hand away.

Audrey opened her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelin’s. But that’s my bad arm. -I didn’t mean anything’ personal.”

“oh, Audrey … I’m sorry. But, please tell me how much cash Sally kept.”

“All right … all right. Jus’ give me a minute. It gets time for my shot I can’t think of anything’ else. You’ll understand that, sometime.

Give me a minute … an’ I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you she had more ‘n a hundred thousand in there in hundreds an’ a bunch of old one-thousands, a couple months ago. - . . You ever see a thousand-dollar bill? You can’t get ‘em any more. She had a hundred an’ thirty-seven thousand dollars in there, all counted out. An’ she gave me ten thousand dollars to pay my bone man, ‘cause he wouldn’t wait, an’ I couldn’t bear to tell Toddy. He doesn’t have a bit of money left. I hope … oh, I hope I haven’t ruined my Toddy……

“No, no. He loves you, Audrey. He’s very proud of YOU.” Audrey Birnbaum’s large right hand-a drawn hand, all lines-searched like a chill spider for one of Ellie’s.

Audrey’s eyes opened, were brighter than before. “Don’t tell him I need my shot,” she said. —Don’t you dare tell him I said anything’ about it. I tell him this cancer makes me sleepy, an’ that’s all he needs to know.”

“I won’t tell him,” Ellie said, and Audrey’s hand loosed hers and wandered away. Audrey’s eyes closed again, as if the light in the room were much too bright.

“Listen, Audrey,” Ellie said. “-Who else knew about that money?” She was afraid to sit on the side of the bed, afraid that would hurt the woman, so she stayed standing.

“Shit, honey-Sally was no goddamn fool. Nobody knew that shit. You know how I found out?”

“No.”

Ellie waited, but Audrey said nothing more.

“Audrey . . . Audrey, could you just tell me how you found out about that money?”

The skull opened elegant coral lips, and breathed in a deep, sighing breath. “-That was a good one. I had my shot I’d be laughin’.” Another deep, deep breath. “-I tried making’ some coffee in that fucker when she had a party a couple years ago-got it out from under the counter-an’

Sally came walkin’ in the kitchen while I was pourin’ water in the top, an’ had a shit fit. She was scared I’d spoiled all that money.”

“And nobody else ever knew?”

“No way. Toddy an’ I used to laugh about that-an’ we were over there once an’ he say he was going’ out an’ make some coffee, just for fun, see Sally jump…… The skull smiled. “I tell you one thing,” Audrey said. “-It sure is time for my shot.”

“Audrey,” Ellie said. “I have to go, now-but I’d like to come see yo again.

What . . . .

“I’d like to come and see you again.”

Audrey lay still, a shrunken brown study except for her shifting hands, and didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “O.K. That’d be nice.

You go by Tabouri’s an’ see if they still have that trench coat in stock. I ever do get out of here, I’m going’ to buy that motherfucker.

I earned it.”

Ellie leaned over and kissed her as lightly as she could on the cheek, imagining the little dog eating at the bones.

“Bye-bye,” she said to Audrey Birnbaum, as though they were friends.

At the nurses’ station, when Ellie mentioned Audrey’s shot, the blond nurse-not so pretty, full-face-smiled, shook her head, and said, “Not yet.”

In the lobby, Ellie waited at a row of phone booths, all busy, until a short man in a tan raincoat came out of the third one, his face red, frowning, tears in his eyes behind bifocal glasses. -Ellie supposed he’d been upstairs to see someone.

She called Nardone’s number at the Squad, and the phone rang several times before it was picked up, Ellie recognized LaPlace’s voice,

“Frank-it’s Ellie. Is Tommy there?”

“He’s over at court. He didn’t come back yet.”

“Well . . . do me a favor. Leave a message for him-O.K.?”

“Right.”

“Tell him we got a break on the Gaither thing.”

“Right.”

“Leave a message for him.-Tell him it was a robbery.”

“No shit? -Hold on while I get a piece of paper….

O. K.”

“It was a robbery. Sally had a hundred thousand dollars in her apartment. A hundred and twenty-seven thousand, maybe more, some hundreds, some thousand-dollar bills. -We have a witness.”

“All right! Nice going’. -Wasn’t there fourteen thou still in there?”

“No-this is beside the fourteen thousand. -Tell him Audrey came through for us.”

” ‘Audrey . . .” O.K., I got it. I’ll give it to him when he comes in.”

“If you leave before then, let Murray have it, O.K.? -I’m going shopping, so tell Tommy he can give me a call tonight, when he gets home. -And I need to know about the plates.”

“Will do. -What plates?”

“Never mind, he can tell me when he calls.”

“O.K. I’ll see he gets it.”

It was darker outside, and close to raining, but no wind blew to shove the few early-fallen leaves along.

Ellie went down the drive to the street, and reached over to grip her left forearm as she walked, reassured by sturdy muscle, by roundness, thickness more than only bones wrapped in cold, slipping skin. She took several deep breaths, deep enough so her lungs ached slightly, expanding with them. The air . . . cool, heavy, damp.

Leaf smelling. Smelling of car exhausts. Smelling slightly dark from the river running along the hospital’s other side.

She walked up to the corner, pleased with the swing of her arms, her legs’ steps and strides, the motion of her hips provoking touches of her clothes, cloth stroking her as she moved. Ellie thought that someday, in a hospital, she was going to wish to be just as she now was-healthy, walking, breathing cool air. Not sick, not old. -I’ll wish that then, she thought, but too late. Now, is when that wish is granted. I have my wish, if I wish it now. . . .

Day after tomorrow-tomorrow being wasted in court and out on Long Island-day after tomorrow, she and Tommy would see Todd Birnbaum again, and ask him how he was paying his wife’s medical bills, and with what money.

It would be time for Tommy to call George Soseby-to give him sad news, and ask him how his business went. -Ask him where a factor found cash to leverage out his deals.

They’d have to check the bank accounts, debts, spending habits of every name and address referenced by the phone company on Sally’s bills for the last year. -It would take weeks to get that done. Bank accounts, debts, spending-by that super, Correa, and the doormen, delivery men, the people from the laundry, dry cleaners, groceries, liquor store.

Go back to Margolies, twist her arm a little for something better than first names. -No more apartment tours.

Soseby-if he was clean-had to have something on Sally’s johns. Something more than first names. He wouldn’t be a man at all, if he didn’t know a little more than that….

They would have to start over, thinking about money this time. -Shea had been ri ht. Too co&I a killing, too neat, too patiently dreadful to be for love. They’d have to start over-and do the Long Island thing as well, and any other bullshit handed to them. -Then, in another week they’d be over at the U.N. at least half their time for a ‘month, listening to Evelyn Costello’s crap on behalf of U.N. Security, listening to security lectures by clowns from a dozen countries, most of whom knew zip about security or police work of any kind. -The classic being the Sec. Rep. from upper Volta last year who was afraid of witchcraft, and wouldn’t be separated from his magic bag containing god-knew-what, which he carried around in his briefcase -with his papers on interrogation modules and crowd control.

Tommy and Ed Graham had bought a tarantula at a pet shop and put it on the seat of the yo-yo’s limo.

I trouble for that, Costello on the corner of Second making her cheek ache e broken.

All for money, after all . . . not for Sally’s beauty, or sex, or a loss of love. For money, Unless Audrey’d been lying … had some reason to lie. -Pictures, Ellie thought, should come in threes: expectation; the thing itself; the memory of it. There should be a second picture of the whore. A picture of questions . . . all lines, all colors left unfinished. No final definitions. What flowed from between Sally’s slender spraddled legs as she lay on her open bathrobe, now, posed on the field of blue, her thighs wide-spread to her fork, where tendons rose at last to show the way-all approaches polished, purniced, waxed, perfumed-to the damp, small socket enjoyed by a thousand men (a mist over her slight white belly, a haze of mother-of-pearl made of ghost semen, ghost smiles, ghost cries, gratitudes of those thousand ghosts)? -Did a green fountain flow from there, that wound permanent, spurting, squirting at first, then gushing a narrow river, all currency (folds and leaves and sheaves of printed light green bills) rushing out to those who loved her, who had said they loved her-each running those verdant rapids in a small planked boat? And one of whom had lied?

The liar, the surest sailor, rowed a ruby oar.

Ellie walked two blocks uptown to Market Garden, went in and took a cart. It was more expensive than the supermarket on the island, but had delicacies, and was richly decorated with flowered wicker arches, and, high along the walls, intricate floral abstracts worked out of overlapping sheets of sawn and painted plywood. Leaves, petals, stamens. Whites, creams, mauve. She thought of Phil Shea while she shopped, as, she supposed, a number of women were doing as they shopped—considering men they had, had had, wished to have. Might have.

Considering their children, too, of course. Their parents …

Or sometimes, in the aisles, simply summing up the day. -She could consider Clara. Probably one or two of the women were considering Claras as they picked out their oranges-the Valencias, as usual, a little green.

Ellie’d never been sure if that small area of green at the end of the orange meant it was really unripe, could make you sick. -Though if two and a half chili dogs, half a pound of fat fries and the shake hadn’t, she didn’t suppose a green orange would.

Having so far to walk, she shopped light, and bought a can of skinless-boneless sardines in olive oil, a jar of Greek olives in herb oil, a pound of corn bread-her rye and pumpernickel were still in Leahy’s little refrigerators head of cauliflower, a half pound of Land O’ Lakes sweet butter, and a single-stack box of Cracked Wheat crackers.

She got into line, paid-the girl asked for coupons, and Ellie remembered she had coupons for the butter, but not in this purse-carried her plastic shopping bag out into the street, and headed downtown to the tram.

It began to rain as the tram car rose, murmuring along the roof, spangling the windows first, then sheeting them.

The river lay flat charcoal-gray below-the gray the superficial ruction of rain across its surface, the charcoal all beneath.

The men and women crowded in the car smelled of wet wool, the duller sweat smell of wet synthetics. The dampness drew out the odors of the women’s scents, as well deodorants, powders, perfume”eepening them, darkening them so they partitioned the car. Here Tea-rose, there Choise-then Shalimar.

At the apartment door, Mayo performed (unusual for him) a small curvet of welcome-and didn’t bolt out to the hall. Ellie switched on the light with her elbow, put her purse on the hall table, then bent to pick him up one-handed, and carry him pleased and limp into the kitchen to feed, a light balance-weight for the grocery bag.

She opened a can of 9-Lives liver, emptied it into a saucer, and slid the dish under the table for him; then went back to the hall to check her answering machine. A message from her mother. A message from Mary Gands.

“Engaged at last—engaged at last! -Call me!” Ellie supposed Joseph had agreed to stop drinking. Or at least try to stop drinking.

Ellie undressed in the bedroom, hung up her jacket, skirt, and blouse, and went into the bathroom to change her tampon. She sat on the toilet for a few moments afterward, peeing. -And what would Mary say if Ellie left a message on her machine. Engaged at last—again!

Am going out to Sheepshead Bay to live the rest of my life with a cop named Shea … and take care of his little boys. And probably love them—to his satisfaction, no matter how tough he talks. And have Sonia Gaither come and visit us, and consider us her family … get some rest from sorrow and loneliness, be safe behind Phil Shea. “Tough Cookie.”

Ellie supposed, if anything ever did happen, which it probably wouldn’t since she didn’t even know the man, that she would bake him cookies on his birthday, make gentle fun of the nickname-not wanting to picture too clearly the places, circumstances, the ortions of seconds in which he’d earned it. That was another house for Sally to have written about-the house of terror. -But she’d only visited there once, and then it was too late.

Ellie couldn’t imagine herself making love to Phil Shea.

She supposed she could imagine him making love to her!

Fucking the daylights out of her, to be precise…. He’d screw a baby into her in no time flat. A Catholic baby, like Sonia’s lost brother.

-And Tommy would be very pleased. He’d liked Shea right away at the cemetery, been worried Shea wouldn’t call after all…. would hurt her.

-Then, he and Connie would come out and visit the mama-to-be, very happy for her, and Tommy would go fishing with Phil-and there’d be Tommy’s ex-partner, left behind on the dock with Connie for health reasons, the baby coming soon. There she’d be, with her belly stuck out a mile, advertising it to everybody at the grocery, all the waiters in the seafood restaurants out there. -This lady has spent some time on her back with her legs in the air, getting laid but good, and it’s turned her into something different from what she was.

If it came to a choice at St. Margaret’s emergency, between her and the baby which would Phil Shea choose?