Park Lane South, Queens (7 page)

Claire held the first slide of him up to the light.

There he was, on tiptoes, squinting at the camera from the waterfall. He was thinking maybe this photograph would be seen by some big-shot producer. Claire sighed, remembering the cool, enduring waterfall.

A car came down the block and its headlights lit up the spider web along the rail, turning it silver and exposing wriggling victims caught and now doomed. Claire groaned and looked the other way. It wasn't the spider that troubled her. Spiders were good luck. This one scrambled over to his favorite, strategic thread and waited for wind and traffic to send him his well-earned dinner. What troubled Claire were those he wouldn't eat. Grudgingly, she'd have to get up and untangle the ones she felt especially sorry for. She couldn't help it. She suspected she was only prolonging their inevitable karmic rebirths to a higher form of life, but it was a tricky problem. After all, destiny had placed her in this spot, too, complete with her sucker's instinct to save the stupid things. The spider would only catch more, so what good would it do? And what was good, anyway? What you meant well very often turned out to be a muddle. Like the time in McLeod Gange when she'd run around trying to get some help for the dying cat. Claire had barely known the cat, but Hula, the proprietress of the tea shop, had pulled the mangy thing off the street for her and her aversion to mice and so she'd felt bound to the thing.

She'd cleaned it up and fed it for a week, but the sickly thing would not get well. It lay at the top of the stairs and wouldn't move, wouldn't eat. It just stank. And Claire had picked it up and run around trying to get help for it. Everyone had laughed. Nobody cared about a damn cat. She'd carried the stinking animal into the traffic of Himalayan hubbub and she was going to find him a vet. Of course there was no vet, not even in the Hindu village down below, so she carried it to the healing lama. When she'd finally made it to the lama's cabin he wasn't there, he was up in the mountain searching for herbs to roll into pills. The narrow-eyed assistant, thinking himself helpful, had brought out a club, and he was baffled when Claire, in tears, had jogged away down the path with the now-moaning cat. In a panic, Claire had realized that she had to get the poor thing home to the Tea Shop of the Tibetan Moon. Along the way, in the middle of the village, with the prayer wheel going round and round and a session of young monks playing potsy in the road, the cat had thrown back its orange head, stretched its arms and legs in rigid agony, and died.

When things were set to die, Claire knew, one might well provide them with peaceful surroundings in which to do it and not go carting them about like a lunatic, as though it would do any good. She bit into her bologna sandwich. The bread was so fresh that it stuck to the roof of her mouth like a host at communion. And you couldn't beat sharp mustard. You really couldn't. Murmuring confusion seeped from the separate television camps the family was divided into around the house. She had the feeling, almost hope and almost fear, that nothing would ever happen again. The milk was ice cold and she drank it greedily. A burst of laughter from inside lit up her face and she smiled with them at some new antic of Michaelaen's. Or someone's. It didn't matter. She was with them, apart but close.

The car that had just passed turned around, hesitated, then stopped right in front of the house. Some sporty little car. A light went on in Iris von Lillienfeld's back porch and the Mayor crossed over the street. A big man climbed out of the car, studied something in his hand and proceeded up the front walk. Claire leaned forward. It was that—that drug dealer from this afternoon! A thrill of something went right through her.

“This 113-04?” He shielded his eyes from the lantern, then saw her shocked face. Jesus! It was that very same cuckoo from the pizza place!

“You've got a lot of nerve,” she reprimanded him, her tone dating back to a decade of tight-assed, condescending grammar school nuns.

“Look, lady. Before you get all bent out of shape, I didn't come here to see you!”

Claire dropped the whole box of slides. Lady? How old did he think she was? Had he followed her home?

“Does a Mr. Stanley Breslinsky live here?” he continued, politely bending down to help her pick up the cascade of slides.

“No!” she snatched one right out of his hand. He had wrists thick with enemy black hairs. “You've put your fingerprints all over the slide.” She pulled her hair out of her eyes. “Yes, he does live here,” she said, annoyed, in fact, that he hadn't followed her home.

Married, concluded Johnny, hating her.

“Dad!” called Claire. Now he hated her more.

No one came and the two of them glared at each other. “Dad!” she called again, louder, refusing to get up and give those scornful eyes a good shot at her short shorts.

Stan looked through the front screen. “Oh,” he said, peering out at Johnny. “I didn't hear the dog.”

“He took off,” Claire complained. “This man would like to speak with you.”

This man, Johnny mimicked her inside his head. Like, “this creep.” “Detective Benedetto,” he said. “I'm with the 102nd. You stopped off there this morning?”

“Yes?” Stan looked around guiltily, then remembered Mary was off to church.

“I wonder if I could have a word with you?”

“Sure!” Stan opened the door and ushered Johnny in. What a hulk of a guy! He slapped him on the back and directed him into his “study,” a room dedicated to one cannon after the next. Wherever you looked there were cannons, homemade crossbows, hunks of wood in various stages of finish. Johnny gave a low whistle. “You make this stuff?” he eyed Stan, impressed.

“What? This?” Stan waved aside the room as though he'd never seen it. “Just a hobby. Old man like me. Got to have something to do now, don't I?”

Johnny picked up a rosewood and brass miniature of exquisite proportion.

“This is beautiful.”

“That's the Gustavus Adolphus,” Stan glowed. “Swedish.” If Michael had lived … Stan started to think, till he caught himself.

“God. I've never seen work like this. Look at the wheels!”

“You have a good eye. Most people don't notice detail like that. The wheels happen to have been the most difficult of all. I had to study to be a wheelwright in order to make them. Lots of time, they took, lots of time. We fired one last weekend. That's why there's still a little powder burn near the wick.”

“You're kidding! You mean these things really work?”

“Indeed they do. The cannonballs are in the limber, there.”

Johnny flipped open the miniature lock and opened it. It eased open like a well-oiled treasure box. Not only were there twenty little cannonballs lined up neatly on a polished shelf, but a proper bucket, a mallet, and a pickax as well, all gleaming in rosewood and brass. A delicate white cord with gold-nuggeted ends was waxed, braided, and coiled.

“But you're an armorer!” Johnny exploded.

Stan was wiping his hands on an old piece of shammy. He looked up through his bushy eyebrows and studied Johnny. “Not many people know what a small-arms expert is, either.”

Fascinated, Johnny turned the smooth wheel of the Rodman. “Yeah, well, there aren't too many of them around. I got to know one of them in Nam. He was a genius with explosives.”

“Really? That's what I did in World War II. Demolition. We blew up the swastika of Nürnberg.” He grinned. “Among other things.”

Stan and Johnny gazed at each other with final approval. The record came to an end and Stan hurried over to flip it. “Ah, Puccini,” he sighed.

“Sir?”

“Puccini.”

“Sounds good,” Johnny scratched his forehead, embarrassed.

“So,” Stan sank into his chair, “down to tacks.”

Johnny reminded him of the conflicting numbers he'd reported.

“Oh, yes. You see, my daughter saw this car, and—”

Johnny looked up at Carmela pirouetting into the room. She was wearing a tuxedo and stiletto heels. Her mouth was an indignant fuschia.

“My daughter,” Stan shrugged. “Carmela.”

“Dad, my car won't start.”

“It's just the butterfly, knucklehead. It always is.”

“Yes, but I'd rather take yours, if I may.” She looked Johnny over. From the lines of his car she had thought he'd be something. He had good teeth all right, but his Izod La Coste shirt was not a La Coste at all. It was a counterfeit. What's more, it looked as though it had been slept in. He was obviously ill-bred. Didn't even stand up. Stan fished in his pocket for keys and handed them over. “Be careful,” he warned and she started to leave.

“You the one who saw the car?” Johnny stopped her.

Carmela gripped her chest. “Me? Of course not. That was Claire.”

“That's my other daughter … on the porch.”

“Yes, she lives on the porch,” Carmela smiled.

“Oh, she doesn't live on the porch. Sometimes she sleeps out there.”

“Every night since she's come home.”

“You see, Claire's been living overseas—”

“Over a tea shop. In the Himalayas.”

“Yes. Well. She's not used to being back in civilization yet. And she … she saw this car early in the morning but she thought it would be better if I went down and told about it.”

Johnny's shoulder's sank. “I'm afraid I'll have to speak to her then.”

“Oh, no!” they both said.

Johnny looked at them.

Carmela untangled her bow tie and pulled it up into her hair. “You see, Claire has this thing about policemen.”

“She won't talk to you,” Stan agreed. “I mean, she'd rather not.”

A gigantic funeral arrangement came in on a pair of men's legs.

“Freddy!” Carmela cried. “Gladiola!”

Freddy struggled in and lowered the flowers onto Stan's cluttered desk. He was dressed a la Miami Vice and his hair was shaved stylishly over his ears with a brilliantined dip in the front. “From the restaurant.” His lips pursed of their own accord. “I've got so many I don't know what to do with them all. I'll bring more by tomorrow when I come to pick up Michaelaen.”

He's a fruit, thought Johnny.

“Daddy!” Michaelaen, so happy that he had to act mad, marched into the room and butted his head into his father's designer-jeaned leg.

“Where's your mother?” Freddy hugged him. “Go tell her I'm here.”

“This is Frederick Schmidt,” Stan introduced him to Johnny. “Detective Bene …”

“Benedetto,” Johnny finished for him, stretching out his hand, remembering AIDS.
Daddy
?

Uh-oh, thought Freddy and he put up his guard.

“Schmidt? Freddy Schmidt?” Johnny repeated out loud. “You didn't used to quarterback for Holy Cross?”

“That was me,” Freddy grinned, resigned now to the look of shock, disgust, and pity that was sure to cross Johnny's face. But it didn't come. At least he has that much class, Freddy thought. “How's the writing coming, Carmela? Won any Pulitzers yet?”

Carmela threw herself across the ripped leather sofa and flung one arm behind her head. “If I don't get some dirt on someone fast, I might very well be forced to go back to writing novels.” She exhaled an elaborate swoon.

“Not that you ever finished one of those,” said Zinnie as she walked in and gave Freddy a kiss on the cheek. “You look good,” she told him generously. “Hi,” she reached over and gave a hand to Johnny.

“Detective Benedetto, meet Officer Breslinsky,” Stan said proudly. He wished Freddy wouldn't sit like that, so close to the Dahlgren. You never knew when that one would fire. There were still some kinks in it that he would have to work out.

Freddy obligingly stood up and walked over to the bar. “Drink?” he asked no one in particular and helped himself to a Frangelica.

“Officer, huh? Where do you work?”

“Midtown South. Anticrime.”

“Nice house. Who's your hook?”

“My brother was on the job.” Zinnie suddenly began to search for fleas in Michaelaen's spanking clean mop of hair.

“No kidding? How long you been on?”

“Three years,” Zinnie smiled.

Nice kid, Johnny thought.

“You want to talk to Claire?” She accepted the bourbon and water Freddy handed her.

“Seems to be a problem.”

Zinnie kicked her head to one side. “Leave it to me. C'mon.” She led Johnny back out to the porch where Claire was on hands and knees under the hammock, carefully retrieving the last of the slides.

“Man wants to talk to you,” Zinnie took a long swig of her drink and smacked her lips.

Claire looked up at her. They traded telepathic messages, the final one being Zinnie's no-nonsense reminder that this was a murder here, not a parking ticket. Claire wobbled to her feet. Johnny just stood there, looking. And he was nice and comfortable in his own skin, a thing she rarely was. He made her feel … unreal. She cleared her throat.

Johnny leaned on the railing. Claire grasped his arm with both hands and transported him a few feet to the left. “You were backing into the spider's web,” she mumbled.

“Thank you,” he said, misunderstanding her concern for the spider as concern for him.

They were both going to be civil.

“You take pictures?”

“Mostly just old people up in the park.”

“My sister shoots Jews.” Zinnie curtsied and left.

“Now about this car …”

Claire put the slides down. “I woke up for no reason. Maybe the sun woke me up. Or the Mayor.”

“The dog.”

“Yes, the dog. And a big, old gold Plymouth was coming down from the park, see, right down there …”

Plymouth. He was writing this down. He wasn't going to let her catch him looking at those legs.

“Plymuth?” she frowned at his notes. “So you can't spell.”