He looked somewhat better when he emerged. “You’ve used up all my sociability for today and the whole rest of the week too. I’m going to take a nap and I don’t care for company, so go on.”
“Do I need to call for help? Are you OK?” He fixed me with a hostile stare and I added quickly, “Yes, yes, of course you are. May I call to ask some more questions? And come again?”
“You’re almost as bad as a reporter. Annoying little mosquito.” Then he sighed. “What the hell. Come again but not too soon. Tell you what…”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got some files you might like to have. Make a deal? Come take me out again next week and you can have them.”
“You have files? From the period I need?’
He turned the chair into a back room. I was astonished to see it was lined with meticulously labeled cabinets. A clean desk and a computer table stood at one end of the room.
“I guess you still write.”
“If you’d call it that. It sure isn’t reporting. Yeah, yeah, I can see you’re dying to ask, so I’ll tell you. I quit reporting when diabetes took my leg. Doctors seemed to think a few decades of smoking and drinking did some damage, too. Imagine my surprise. So now I write men’s adventure novels. I can turn one out in six weeks. Crap, but it pays the rent. Satisfied now?”
“But I didn’t ask…I…”
“Nah, but you were wondering.” True. “Can’t kid a kidder or something like that. And don’t think about looking for any of them, either. I sure don’t use my real name.” He turned to the file cabinets. “Try the fourth in, third down.”
The drawer was perfectly organized, files color-coded, meticulously labeled by topic and date. Not a speck of dust on the surfaces.
I wondered if he knew how much this told me about him. Then again, would he care?
“They’d be just a loan. And no quoting without permission and credit!”
“Well, of course not.” I could hardly contain my excitement. “And I’ll take good care of them. You won’t regret this.”
“Yeah, I might. I already do. I just had an unusual moment of weakness.” He slammed the drawer shut. “After our next outing.”
The thought crossed my mind that he was lonely.
“Now you answer a question for me. I’m tired but I’m not dead and I want to know. You never said why you’re so stuck on all this old stuff.”
That stopped me. “I don’t know, exactly. Because it’s news again? Haven’t you seen the stories? The same issues keep coming back. And because I live there myself and—I don’t know—I don’t quite fit in—but my daughter does—and I guess I’m trying to understand it. Sometimes it seems like a foreign country to me, too.”
“Yeah? Whereabouts do you live?”
I told him and he gave a short, raspy laugh
.
“I could tell you some stories about that end of the neighborhood, back in the day. Wild old times back then. Next time.”
I took a deep breath. “There was a skeleton hidden behind the wall in my house. We just found it.”
His whole face lit up. “Jesus H. Christ, what a story! If only I was still who I used to be.”
He yawned. “But I’m not that guy anymore. Get going. I’ve had enough visiting for today.”
I headed out, mulling over what he had told me and knowing that I would call Mrs. Rogow as soon as I had a chance. I could ask her all kinds of questions about her husband’s business. It might give me a wealth of interesting details to play with, and I thought I ought to get the landlord’s point of view on all this. I was skeptical that I would be persuaded by it, but I had to admit that it was a missing piece. It was now obvious I should not mention Leary in that conversation and I understood Steven Richmond’s work was confidential, but I knew I might learn something he could use. Or at least, I hoped so.
And in the back of my mind, I wondered if she could tell me something about my own house, and who had lived there. The fact that I had ordered Chris to leave it alone, and sent her away to make sure she didn’t ignore me, certainly did not mean I could not ask some questions myself. I am a mature, careful and sensible adult, unlike my daughter. It was different for me. Of course it was.
And I was a historian, living in a house with some real history. I couldn’t be expected to walk away from that.
Back at my car, I reflexively checked my phone for messages. Nothing from Chris. Not that I was expecting anything. Nothing from work. And still nothing from Rick. With no child at home now—and wouldn’t she be insulted to hear me call her a child!—and this not being a workday, I was completely free. I made a snap decision to drive over to Rick’s house in Queens and lean on his doorbell. Or leave him a note, at least. With traffic it could take awhile, but what the heck? I was already in the car, and I was fed up with his disappearing act. And underneath it all, I thought that if he was in some alcoholic or other trouble, then he needed me.
I hadn’t been out there in a long time. He usually came to visit me, or took me out, wanting to see Chris or perhaps, as I often suspected, checking up on me. Queens streets confuse me. Avenues, drives and streets could all have the same number, but some of the old landmarks were still there. Turn right at the supermarket, I told myself, then left at the community center, right at the white brick apartment tower.
I turned onto Rick’s street of modest homes on tiny lawns, and saw a whole flock of police cars. They were roosting right in front of his house.
Something was wrong. This wasn’t a social scene, not in patrol cars. I proceeded slowly down the block until an officer stopped me. Rick’s door was open and people were going in and out.
“What’s going on?”
“Police business, miss. Sorry. You’ll have to go around the block if you need access to the other end of the street.”
“No. No, I was going here, to that house. The owner is a close friend.”
Something shifted in his expression, away from his official mask mode to an expression I couldn’t read. It scared me, and I was already scared. He only said, “Wait right here,” and disappeared. He was back in a second with a plainclothes officer.
She leaned into my car window. “Name, please.”
“Erica Donato. I was coming to see Rick Malone, who lives here.” It took a huge effort of will, but I was keeping my voice firm and my gaze steady. “He’s a long time family friend, for my whole life, and I’d like to know…”
She cut me off. “ID please.” I showed her.
“Ah, Ms. Donato. I believe we’ve been looking for you. When was the last time you called here?”
“This morning. I wanted to see him.”
“I thought so. Yes, we heard your message on his phone. OK, we need to talk. May I get in your car?”
Could I say no? I nodded, turned off the ignition, kept my hands glued to the wheel so they wouldn’t shake.
“Do you have any idea who his next of kin is?”
My heart, that big lump in my throat, sank like a stone.
“What’s wrong? I know it’s something terrible.”
“You need to answer my questions first. Next of kin?”
“I don’t know that there is any. He’s divorced, no kids. He was an only child. He used to joke about how weird that was for an Irish kid.” I could hardly get the words out. “No, wait, he had some cousins at the Jersey shore he sometimes visited. Red Bank, maybe? Or Seaside?” I shook my head. “I don’t even know their names.”
“He lists Len Shapiro as an emergency contact, but we’re not getting any response at that number.”
There were tears on my cheeks now. I could feel them. “That’s my father. They were old, old friends. But Dad moved to Arizona last year.”
“That explains it. It’s a Brooklyn number. You have the current one?”
“I’m not telling you anything else until you tell me what’s going on. You know Rick is a retired detective? And I saw him, just a few days ago…”
Her face softened slightly. “I guess we could tell you a little. I’m sorry to break this to you, but we got a call last night. He was found, he was identified, and he is deceased. It must have happened a few days back.”
The tears fell harder but I only brushed them away impatiently until the detective handed me a handkerchief. I refused to start sobbing; I needed to know everything.
“An accident? A heart attack?
“I’m sorry. It definitely was not either of those. He was shot.”
“What? Was it a robbery? In the house? Or on the street?”
She shook his head. “Can’t tell anyone anything yet. You could tell us some things though, like when was the last time you saw him? Or heard from him?”
Somewhere in there another cop joined us. I told them. I told them about the phone calls not returned, too. I told them Rick hadn’t said a thing about problems, but then he never did. I told them I knew next to nothing about his personal life. He always said with a sly smile that the details were not fit for my young ears.
She nodded, wrote, didn’t say much.
“I might be the closest thing he has to family. I’ve known him my whole life. He and my dad were friends since they were in second grade.” I had stopped crying, for the moment anyway, and could say firmly, “You should be treating me as family.”
She smiled sadly. “He was one of our own. You know? Trust that we’ll do our best for him. We need to contact your father. Write out his number for me.”
She went on to explain that they still had to contact kin. There would be an autopsy. No funeral until that was done and the entire department brass was satisfied his body had no more to tell them. Then the kin they found could bury him. I wondered if that would end up being me. That was enough information. At least, it was all I could take in for now.
I wanted to go home.
I was never sure, after, just how I found my way there. I pointed the car west, toward the city, and somehow ended up at my house.
The phone was beeping at me as I walked in and there was a message from the cops, the call they had made before I arrived at Rick’s. I started crying again.
I should be calling my father. I knew I should. He was about to hear shocking news from total strangers. No matter what the coolness was between them the last few years, they had been lifelong friends. And no matter how I felt about my old man myself, I had some responsibility here. But my mind and body both were be shutting down. I would suck it up and call after I rested a little.
I sleepwalked up to my room and curled on my bed, fetal position, under my old comforter on this hot summer day, and cried until I couldn’t cry any more. I got up with an aching head and raw eyes, fumbled my way to what used to be my kitchen, looking for who knew what, found a bottle of wine in the cartons in the dining room, could not remember where I had packed the corkscrew, and instead poured vodka into a plastic cup I found.
It didn’t help the headache and it didn’t stop the tears when they started again, thinking about how I would have to tell Chris. Thinking about how, when I stopped crying, I would have to think, really think, about what had happened to him and why. Was I crying for everyone else I missed too, my mother, my young husband, even my father? The father he used to be?
I woke up to bright sun pouring in. My first thought was yesterday, and everything that had happened. And that I had never called my father.
My stomach tied itself into knots. I would have to tell Chris too. Somehow. I would have to somehow take in that Rick was dead. Rick was dead. How was that possible?
Oh, and there was something wrong in my house. It was too quiet. It was after ten and there were no workmen creating a head-splitting racket. Oh, yes, they were getting supplies today. I could walk around in my pajamas.
Where to start? Cold water on my face and a hot shower. Wrapped in a beach towel, I went downstairs, gulped down the room temperature Greek coffee left from the night before last, wandered to the computer to look for mail. There was one in the New Mail folder:
HEARD ABOUT RICK. I AM IN REHAB CENTER WITH A BROKEN HIP (YOU OUGHT TO SEE THE OTHER GUY). I’LL BE IN NEW YORK AS SOON AS THE DOCS SPRING ME, DAD
He’d written it late last night.
I wrote back:
YOU HAVE E-MAIL THERE? WHERE ARE YOU? WHAT HAPPENED?
The phone rang, shockingly loud in the silent house
.
“Yah, they have all the modern conveniences out here on the frontier,” he said without a greeting.
“
Tell me everything.”
It was his gravelly voice and Brooklyn accent for the first time in six months. And last time, the last few times, we had nothing good to say to each other. It was so good to hear his voice I had to remind myself I was still mad at him.
“First you tell me.”
“I see you still think you’re in charge? Well, I had a little car accident, I broke a few bones and I’m going to be fine evenually. That’s it.”
“A car accident? And you didn’t tell me?”
“Yeah, well, seems like you were not too happy with me last time we talked.”
“But that was…”
“If my memory isn’t failing, you hung up on me.”
I did, much as I would have liked to deny it. Or to remind him of what he said that caused me to do it. Or…no, this was not the time. For once, I swore, I would not engage.