Killer Smile (5 page)

“Then, they take,” her mother said, with typical finality.

“Who takes what?” Mary reached for her cup and tried to cool her mouth with scorching coffee.

“Somebody.
They
take his paper.” Her mother frowned deeply. “Brandolini’s paper. Somebody
take
it!”

“You think somebody
took
his file?”

“
Sì
. They want nobody to see. So somebody, they
take
.” Her mother snatched the steam that curled upward from the plate of gnocchi, and when she opened her palm, the steam had vanished. Mary was surprised by her mother’s cool hand tricks, but not her suspicion. Vita DiNunzio was always vigilant to the Devil At Work, especially in law firms.

“I doubt it, Ma.”

“This, I feel. This, I
know
!”

“Nobody took the file, Veet,” her father said wearily, his forehead creased all the way to his liver-spotted scalp. “Don’t jump to conclusions. The government loses more papers than it hides.”

But Judy had stopped eating, and her azure eyes glinted with doubt. “It’s a toss-up, Mr. D. I’d believe that somebody would deep-six the file of a suicide in federal custody. It’s a no-brainer. There was liability there. Maybe they were afraid of getting sued. After all, that’s exactly what’s happening, with Mary on the case.”

“Nah.” Matty DiNunzio shook his head. “I lived through that time, kiddo. Suing woulda been the last thing on anybody’s mind, then. People didn’t sue each other like they do now. And the government, who would sue them? Especially during the war.”

“It’s not completely impossible, Pop,” Mary said, thinking out loud. “Amadeo’s suicide had to be an embarrassment for the camp and for the government. Hell, for a long time they tried to keep the entire Italian internment a secret.”

Vita DiNunzio wagged a crooked finger. “Maria, this I feel, something
evil
! You pray and you no find? Then somebody
take
!”

And Mary, who had never before put that kind of faith in Saint Anthony, couldn’t say that her mother was mistaken.

Mary eyed her latest blind date, one Jason Pagonis, as he read his menu. He was tall, cool, and reasonably handsome, with close-cropped black hair and brown eyes behind hip little glasses. His smile was pleasant and his manner friendly. He was her age, apparently healthy, with good teeth. He wore a black sport jacket over a black T-shirt, with jeans. In short, there was nothing wrong with him. Mary would have to work hard to find something.

“So what are you having?” Jason asked, looking up unexpectedly.

Mary reddened. “Don’t know. What’s good here?”

“Everything. I love this place. It’s owned by Masaharu Morimoto, one of the Iron Chefs. You’ve heard of them.”

“Sure.” Mary nodded. Her mother was an Iron Chef.

“I love the design elements here. The aesthetic. It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Mary glanced around. She had never seen a restaurant like this except on
The Jetsons
. The tables and chairs were sculpted of transparent Lucite and lit from within with colored lights, so they actually glowed. Not only that, but the hue of the tables and chairs changed constantly, so at the moment, Mary’s chair was blue, turning her butt blue, too. Two minutes ago her butt was green, having segued from a bright yellow. Mary wasn’t sure it was a good look for her.

“The restaurant has an incredible website, too.”

“I bet.” Mary was suspicious of restaurants with websites. In fairness, she was suspicious in general, tonight. She’d worked the whole day, read approximately 129,373 documents, and still Saint Anthony hadn’t found Amadeo’s file. Could it really have been taken by the government? And was it behind this stupid decor, too?

“For an appetizer, I’d start with the shira ae.”

“I always do.”

Jason looked up. “You’ve eaten here?”

“No, I was joking around.”

“Oh.” Jason shot her a mercy smile, and Mary vowed instantly to stop joking around. Joking Around evinced a Bad Attitude, and she would fall prey to everyone’s claim that she Just Wasn’t Trying.

Jason was saying, “Shira ae is asparagus with sesame oil.”

“Mmm.”
Barf
. “What’s a good entrée?”

“The ishi yaki burl bop.”

Mary wondered what language Jason was speaking. She squinted at the menu but couldn’t read it in the orange haze emanating from the table. “What is whatever you said?”

“It’s yellowtail on rice, and it’s great. And for dessert, I’d have the togarashi.”

Mary blinked.

“Japanese sweet potato cake.”

“Great. I like cake. Cake, I understand. Cake is great.” Mary closed her menu, and Jason closed his.

“Great.”

Now that everything was great, Mary wanted to leave, but she knew she was expected to Make Conversation. “So you went to Stanford Law, with Anne.”

“Yes, how is she?”

“She’s on vacation, in St. Bart’s.” Having just opened the subject of her fellow associate, Mary realized that she had to close it right away. Anne Murphy was the hottest girl ever to earn a J.D. degree. No guy who was thinking of Anne would want to be in a multi-colored restaurant with anyone else. Mary tried to think of something else to say. “You were on Law Review, right?”

“Yeah, until I quit to spend more time with my band.”

Mary blinked. The only thing cooler than making Law Review was quitting Law Review. “You had a band? What kind of band?”

“Beginner Foo Fighters. I still play a little, with a pickup band. On a good day, we sound like Wilco.”

“Wilco?”

“Spoon?”

“Got one, thanks,” Mary said, but when she peered at the table setting through a now-yellow cloud, only chopsticks were there. “Oh, I guess I don’t have one.”

“No. Spoon is an indie rock group. Like Flaming Lips, ever heard of them?”

“No.” Mary didn’t know what he was talking about and found her thoughts straying back to Amadeo. Where was his file? Then she stopped her train of thought. It’s not a hot date if you find yourself fantasizing about work during it. She was pretty sure it was supposed to be the other way around.

“How about Vertical Horizon?”

“Huh? No.” Mary was worrying that she would never find anything of Amadeo’s, that there was nothing he had left behind. Why did it bother her so much? Then she knew. Because it made it seem like Amadeo didn’t matter, and he did. Everybody did. Mike mattered, even though he was gone. She loved him still. She had learned a long time ago that you don’t stop loving somebody just because they die.

“What kind of music do you like, Mary?”

Huh?

“Do you like music?”

“Sure.”

“What kind?”

Mary was too preoccupied to think of the right answer, so she told the truth. “Sinatra,” she said, and she could see
Check, please
flutter behind Jason’s eyes.

“
Frank
Sinatra?”

The question was so absurd, Mary didn’t know what to say.

“I heard Frank Sinatra sing a duet with Bono, and it was great. Bono is great, don’t you think?”

Bono wishes he were Sinatra.

“I heard there was a mural of Frank Sinatra, somewhere in town.”

“There is, at Broad and Reed.” Finally, something Mary knew about. “It’s almost seven stories tall. It’s a painting of that photo where he has his jacket slung over his shoulder and his hat is tilted. It’s really amazing.”

“I don’t know that photo.”

“Oh.”
Great
. Maybe it wasn’t a good time for Mary to mention she was the only member of the Sinatra Social Society under age sixty-five, now that Yolanda had passed.

They fell silent.

Mary said, “Mario Lanza is on a mural, too, at Broad and Dickinson.”

“Mario Lanza? Who’s he?”

Ouch
. Mary felt stupid for knowing, which seemed somehow ironic. “Mario Lanza was a great tenor and he was born in Philadelphia.” She didn’t add that Mario Lanza was her mother’s favorite. Or that Vita played his classic “Be My Love” on a continuous loop every Sunday, after Mass. These were colorful details Jason Pagonis would never hear. He was missing the best parts of the conversation. “They even have a new museum to him, on Montrose.”

“Montrose, where’s that?”

“In South Philly.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Jason said, his tone surprised. “When did he sing? Or perform?”

“In the forties.”

“The
nineteen
forties?”

Again, Mary didn’t know what to say.
Yes, Frank Sinatra.

“That was a long time ago.”

That’s what makes it classic.
Mary broke into a sweat. She couldn’t relax. She needed a drink but she didn’t drink, especially not Japanese sake, which tasted like warm balsamic and came in ceramic thimbles too small for Italian noses.

“So.” Jason cleared his throat. “Anne tells me you’re working on a really interesting case. Wanna tell me what it’s about?”

No
. “Sure. It’s to get reparations for a man who was interned during World War II and committed suicide.”

Jason’s eyes flared. Suicide didn’t get guys hot, and Mary tried to recover.

“I went to the National Archives and saw all these documents that were typed on real typewriters. The documents are from 1941 —”

Jason laughed softly.

“What?” Mary asked, interrupting herself, which had to be a first.

“You have an old soul.”

“I do?”

“Listen to yourself.” Jason paused. “You love old things. Old music. The past.”

Is that bad?
Mary wanted to ask, but she couldn’t because her throat constricted. She felt tense and, suddenly, sad. Sad that she was here with Jason, and sad that since Mike had died, she didn’t belong with anyone. She had stopped fitting in anywhere. She wasn’t a member even of her own generation; somehow she felt older and younger at the same time.

Mary thought unaccountably of the Venn diagrams she had studied in grade school, and how they overlapped. But she didn’t overlap anybody, anymore. She remained in her own circle, and she couldn’t seem to change that, turn it around, or make it better in any way. All she knew was that she wished with every cell of her being that she could go home, take out her contacts, and lie down.

“You two ready to order?” asked the waitress, appearing at the illuminated table.

WORLD WAR II ROOM, read a paper that Mary had taped to the conference room door, and she and Judy had spent all Sunday searching the remaining documents from the National Archives for Amadeo’s file. By nightfall, twenty cardboard boxes full of USELESS documents lined the wall, and at dead center of the table rested a single white memorandum.

“We found something!” Mary said, leaning over the document.

“One lousy page? St. Anthony slacked off.” Judy sank into a swivel chair, crossing her legs in jeans and a striped tank top. Cirque du Soleil meets the Freedom of Information Act.

“No, he didn’t. You wouldn’t let me pray while we were looking, and that’s the only way his prayer works.”

“He’s picky.”

“He’s a
saint
.”

Judy sniffed. “I’m still mad at you for not marrying Jason. Anne said he was really nice.”

“Let her date him.” Mary picked up the document, feeling a tingle of excitement. Not only that History Channel thing, but what her mother had said. A new suspicion that there was a reason Amadeo’s file had gone missing. She reread the document for the tenth time:

Mary felt a spike of anger. She couldn’t imagine Amadeo hearing such awful news this way, and she wanted to know more about Joe Giorno. The name of his law firm was Giorno & Locaro, which must have been an earlier incarnation of Giorno & Cavuto, the firm that represented Amadeo’s son, Tony. The address was the same, too. The lawyer for Tony’s estate was Frank Cavuto, and he had brought her the case because he knew her from the neighborhood.

The memorandum ended there. The bottom of the page bore no number, so it was probably the first and last page of the memo. It raised more questions than it answered, and Mary’s thoughts churned. “Judy, don’t you wonder why they monitored Brandolini’s conversation?”

“No, I’m too tired.”

“In the individual files, only a few had memos of monitored conversations, and they were of internees the government actually believed were dangerous, like that guy who ran a fascist newspaper. Why would the FBI care about a fisherman from Philly?”

“Let’s call it a day, Mare.” Judy smoothed her bangs back but they popped forward again.

“Why did they keep the FBI informed? It says ‘per request.’ ” Mary couldn’t stop looking at the document. Oddly, she’d found it among correspondence from the camp commander’s office about coffee rations, milk orders, and laundry schedules, the quotidian business of running an internment camp during a world war. “Aren’t you curious why this page was stuck in the correspondence file?”