“Ha! You think we’ll be together that long?”
“What long? It could happen tonight!”
Ruby smiled. “It could,” she said. “It won’t, but it could.”
Crockett opened the door and followed her inside.
Salvatori Calucci’s caseworker was a lady named Mrs. Thorsen. She was waiting at the front desk. As tall as Ruby and sixty with salt and pepper hair, thirty extra pounds, skin the color of milk chocolate, and that calm expression of strength and good humor that only comes from frequently dealing with other people’s sorrow and stress, she led them through the main building and toward the rear courtyard.
“Sal is a real piece of work,” she said. “He’s our second oldest resident, next to Mrs. Farmer, and she hasn’t been outside in two years. Oh, he has his good days and bad days, and he drifts quite a bit, but when he’s on, he’s as sharp as anybody here. He and one of the assistants have appropriated a portion of flowerbed. Sal supervises the growing of peppers and tomatoes. He loves to give them to the cooks so that some of what he grows can be served to everybody.”
“How’s he doing?” Ruby said.
“Well, he’s confined to his wheel chair now. He had a tendency to get a little reckless with his scooter. And he’s on an oh-two nasal line most of the time, but other than that, he doesn’t have any really unusual difficulties. Not a lot of pain or discomfort. He just keeps on keepin’ on.” She smiled. “Sal, I’ll miss.”
They walked out of the building and into sunlight once again. There was an easy breeze and the temperature had climbed to about fifty-five degrees. Mrs. Thorsen stopped and scanned the area.
“There he is,” she said, pointing across the lawn to a small figure in a distant wheelchair. She handed Ruby a beeper. “Please stay in that general area so the staff can find you easily. Should you need any assistance, just push the button. If something serious should occur, push the button down and hold it for a count of three. Enjoy your visit and please keep it to no more than thirty minutes. If you need more time with him, feel free to return after lunch or again tomorrow. He’s usually more alert after his morning nap and lunch. Leave the beeper at the desk on your way out. If you have questions, need something, or have any requests, I am at your disposal.”
She shook hands with both of them and walked back into the building.
Salvatori Calucci sat hunkered on one side of his wheelchair staring blankly into the distance. He was dressed in a stocking cap, wool jacket, and very dark sunglasses. Even the heavy tartan blanket wrapped around his legs could not conceal his thinness.
His parchment-colored hands were heavily speckled with liver spots and road-mapped in ropy blue-green veins. His head hung a little to one side on a thin neck, and trembled slightly. An oxygen bottle fed a clear line that wrapped under his nose, over his ears, and was taped to temples. Wisps of gray hair floated around the edge of his cap, and he appeared to be talking to himself. Ruby and Crockett watched him from thirty feet for a moment before she approached his chair.
Ruby took a seat on a bench beside the wheelchair.
“Uncle Salvatori,” she said.
The old man gave a start and looked about.
“Whozat?” he asked peering at her, his voice raspy and dry with age.
Ruby raised her voice. “It’s Ruby, Uncle Sal. Your niece, Ruby.”
He looked at her closely for a moment, then his face shifted with recognition.
“Rose?” he said. “Rose, is that you?”
Ruby smiled. “Hello, Uncle Sal. It’s good to see you.”
“Rose. Little Rosie. Always so pretty and now all grown up. Have you seen the garden?”
“Yes, I have, Uncle Sal. It’s beautiful.”
“Charlie come with you?”
“No, Charlie couldn’t come today, so I came to see you by myself.”
“That’s nice. You’ll stay for dinner? Some veal, a nice eggplant, a cannoli. You’re too thin, Rosie.”
“You sound like a Jewish mother, Uncle Sal.”
The old man cackled and held out his hand. Ruby took it in hers.
“You always were my favorite, Ruby,” he said. “Such a mouth on you! All the others. Yes, Uncle Sal. Okay, Uncle Sal. Whatever you say, Uncle Sal. But you! You stand right up to me. Put your hands on your hips. Why, Uncle Sal? What for, Uncle Sal? I don’t think so, Uncle Sal. I remember one time when you were eight or nine years old and had on a new party dress. You showed me how pretty it looked, all starched and white and I ask you to go out into the garden and pull me some nice green onions. You look at me like I was nuts! ‘In this dress?’ you said. I said ‘Yeah, in that dress!’ You grin this slow grin at me. ‘Uncle Sally,’ you say, ‘that’s just not gonna happen here today.’ What a mouth! You still got that mouth, Ruby?”
“Still do, Uncle Sally,” she grinned.
Sal shook with laughter and memory, then quieted down and stared across the lawn.
“They waste a lot of land on grass here,” he said. “It’s nice of you to stop by, Rosie. Charlie with you?”
“No, Charlie couldn’t come.”
“He’s pretty busy. How long can you stay?”
“I’ve got some errands to run. Can I come back and see you again after lunch?”
“That would be nice. I’m a little tired now, Rose.”
“Fine. I’ll come back later. I have a picture of a lady that I’d like you to look at.”
“Is she pretty?”
Ruby smiled. “Yes. Very pretty.”
“Then I’ll look,” the old man said.
Ruby kissed him on the cheek. “See you after while, Sal,” she said.
He patted her on the face with gnarled and bony fingers.
“You always were my favorite, Ruby,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Connection remembered
They passed Mrs. Thorsen on the way out and told her they’d be back after lunch. She said one o’clock would be about right. Ruby was not inclined to make conversation, and Crockett let the silence alone. She drove back to route twelve and took it southeast into the outskirts of Palatine, stopping at a Cracker Barrel. It was early for lunch rush and the place was sparsely populated. Ruby cruised the gift shop for a while and Crockett wondered what use he could possibly find for a set of bowls that were hand-painted to look like bowls hand-painted to look like watermelons. While he was contemplating that question a heavy-set lady wearing way too much perfume spied them, squealed, and fairly quivered with joy at her good fortune.
“Lovely, aren’t they?” Crockett said.
The lady beamed at him. “Oh, yes!” she gushed. “They’ll be just perfect in my sweet little nook!”
Crockett bit his lip and smiled as she waddled off with four of the things.
Ruby’s whisper came from beside his right ear.
“Meeting chicks?” she said.
“It was looking pretty good ‘til she spied those bowls. I can’t compete with watermelon.”
“That’s gotta knock the hell out of your self-esteem, Crockett. I recommend food. Swallow your problems with pancakes.”
The hostess smiled and seated them. Crockett put away thoughts of a cigarette and leaned back.
“Sal’s gone downhill in the past five years,” Ruby said.
“So have I. Jesus, Ruby. He’s what? Ninety-seven?”
“Ninety-eight in a couple of months.”
“Who’s Rose?”
“My mother. Charlie was my dad. Half the time he thought he was talking to mom. He doesn’t seem to remember they’re dead.”
“That’s not so bad,” Crockett said.
Ruby smiled. “Maybe it’s not. One of the reasons he loved me so much was that he loved my mother so much.”
“Then wasn’t it nice you could bring her to visit him today?”
Ruby looked at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head.
“Crockett,” she said, “you are the damnedest human being I’ve ever known. What an absolute
ly lovely thing to say.”
Ruby stood up, moved to his side of the table, and kissed Crockett gently on the lips.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
They took their time over lunch, loafing along and enjoying each other, and arrived back at Horizon Manor shortly after one. Sal was sitting in the day room looking out a window. Gray gabardine pants limply swathed his legs and showed an inch or two of very pale skin above white socks and black corduroy slippers. His white shirt was buttoned to the throat and his hair had been combed. Rimless glasses that made his eyes appear huge had replaced the shades. As they approached him, the old man looked up.
“Ruby!” he said. “Prettier than ever. I see your mother in you, God rest her soul. Sit down and let an old man look at you.”
Ruby kissed him on the cheek and introduced Crockett as her friend, David. They sat and made small talk for a while. Sal seemed quite lucid, never referred to Ruby as Rose, and appeared stronger than when they’d seen him less than three hours before.
After a few minutes, Ruby brought up the picture and he agreed to look at it. Crockett gave it to him and Sal held it in both hands, resting his wrists on his knees to minimize the trembling. Recognition flashed across his face and he crossed himself, letting the picture slide from his lap to the floor.
“Do you know her, Uncle Sal?” Ruby said.
“I knew her,” he said. “LaVonne Goldstein. That wasn’t the name she used. She called herself Vonda Gold. One look at her could break your heart, she was so beautiful.”
“How did you know her?”
“It was just before we got in the war. I’m working for Anthony ‘Tony Boy’ Castanza. Sort of a driver and bodyguard. Tony’s father, ‘Big Anthony’ Castanza is a made man. One of the under-bosses. Sends Tony out to Kansas City now and then. Does a lot of business with what’s left of the Pendergast machine, people like Charlie Binaggio and Johnny Lazia. They’re running a lot of products between Kaycee and Chicago. Girls, dope, money. Christ, just a few years later, Kansas City’s got tentacles in Vegas from the ground up. Kaycee was wide open under Pendergast. Binaggio wants to open it up again and is convinced that ‘Big Anthony’ Castanza is on his way to being the Capo de Tutti Capi. He can’t do enough for ‘Tony Boy’.”
Sal looked into the distance and smiled.
“Me and Tony are on Rush Street one night at this little hole-in-the wall dive and this girl dancer comes out of the chorus and sings. She’s an okay singer, but she is so beautiful, Tony chokes on his drink when he sees her. He goes nuts! Gets her number, takes her out a few times, this and that, you know how it goes. Never mind that he’s married and got two kids. Never mind that Vonda Gold is a Jew, not an Italian. Tony just can’t take it easy with this girl. She bats her eyes, his brain falls into his pants. Christ, what a mess!”
The old man reached for the picture, and Crockett retrieved it for him.
‘“Sally, I gotta have her,’ Tony Boy says. ‘Sally, I can’t live without her,’ he says. On and on. In Chicago he’s got a connected wife looking over his shoulder, so he gets a bright idea. On one of our trips out to Kansas City, he brings Vonda with him. Binaggio does him a favor and gets her a job in one of them clubs down around Vine Street. Sunset Club, Panama Club, Hey Hey Club, I don’t remember. Tony Boy sets her up in a little apartment, gives her an extra fifty, sixty bucks a week, good money in them days. Tells her he loves her, tells her he’s gonna leave his wife and relocate to Kansas City, tells her whatever he has to tell her to keep her happy, and now he’s making a trip to Kansas City every couple of weeks and staying for four or five days at a time. He’s got a wife and kids in Chicago. He’s got a fiancée in Kaycee. He’s got a Packard adding up more miles than Noah’s Ark.”
Sal sipped from a glass of pale liquid beside his chair.
“Now Vonda ain’t the smartest girl on the planet, but she’s ambitious. She ain’t got the best voice you ever heard, but it ain’t bad, and she’s so freakin’ good looking, funeral processions stop to let her cross the street. With Binaggio’s help, she gets a better job in a better club, then another one, then another one. She moves out of her little apartment and gets in a building over off Gillham. She’s in love. Tony Boy’s in love. Every other Monday, I’m driving him to her place over on Locust Street, and I’m spendin’ three or four nights in some hotel while he plays house.”
Crockett caught Ruby’s startled stare.
“Mr. Calucci,” he said, “did you say you dropped him off on Locust Street?”
“Yeah, at her apartment.”
“Do you happen to remember the address?”
“No. I never did know the address. It was the second building up from 42nd Street. She lived in the second story apartment on the right side as you faced the front. A brick building with its name over the door. The Elmo, or something.”
Crockett’s hands felt numb and he could hear his heartbeat. He leaned back in the chair and tried not to pant.
Her voice strained and thick, Ruby spoke.
“Uncle Sal,” she said, “was the building called the Alma?”
“That’s it,” he said. “The Alma. Carved in the stone over the doorway.”
Crockett got up and walked outside, but it did no good. He could smell To a Wild Rose out there, too.
Crockett was leaning against the wall when Ruby came out. She shook her head.
“Jesus,” she said.
Crockett rubbed his face.
“My place, Ruby,” he said. “She lived right there. My living room was her living room. LaVonne Goldstein. Vonda Gold. The Amazing Disappearing Woman.”
“I guess that’s the other connection that Carl was talking about.”
“Christ, this is getting deep. A woman that has been dead longer than I’ve been alive, that used to live in what is now my home, that showed up in the nightmares of another woman who is a friend of the lady whose deceased niece was your patient and my student and lover, that same woman was the paramour of the man that your uncle drove for when he was a member of the mob back in the forties. Aw, man!”
“Yeah,” Ruby said. “It’s an old story, but a familiar one.”
Crockett looked at her and they both began laughing, leaning against each other in the sunshine, as the tension and the uncertainty of the past few days just flowed away. When they went back inside, Sal was asleep, snoring lightly in his wheel chair. Ruby smoothed his hair.
“We’ll be back tomorrow, Sally,” she whispered. “Pleasant dreams.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Double standard
Crockett and Ruby arrived back at Ivy’s around two-thirty. They her found in the atrium having tea with Cletus, and poured out the whole story of what they’d learned from Uncle Sal. At the end of the tale, Clete sat staring at the floor and shaking his head.
“That’s the damndest thing I ever heard,” he said. “She actually lived in your place?”
“Sal described it perfectly,” Crockett said.
“So, you got a lot in common with a ghost.”
“God, Clete. I don’t know what’s happening. If it was just me, I’d figure I was going nuts, but Ruby smelled the perfume too, my cat saw something that scared the hell out of him, and the Salvatori Calucci connection is just too much. Then there’s Ivy calling us up here for the session with Marta, and the reading Marta did for Ruby and me said something about a connection to the past that led to the future coming into our lives. Too many coincidences, Texican.”
“Nonsense,” Ivy said. “These are not coincidences. A coincidence is when you and a friend happen to show up at a party wearing identical shoes. This is some sort of spiritual conspiracy. You, and therefore Ruby, are being led, Crockett. You are being led by whatever forces are capable of doing such a thing to a destination or situation that is unclear, simply because the universe functions on a need-to-know basis. If God is a force and works in mysterious ways, why should any of us be surprised when mysterious forces seem to be at work in our lives?”
“You’re saying God is behind all this?”
“What I am saying, Dear, is that western society, for the most part, professes to believe in a divine power. A force or presence or spirit, call it what you will, that is responsible for who we are, where we are, and so on. This is a perfect example of a system of belief based upon metaphysics. And while millions upon millions use that belief as the absolute foundation of their religions, paradoxically, the majority of them seem to give no credence to day-to-day metaphysical occurrences.”
She paused for a sip of tea.
“Baptists, Catholics, and their brethren, credit all kinds of metaphysical acts to God or Jesus. They are perfectly willing to accept that Moses received the commandments directly from God, or that Mary, without the benefit of relations with Joseph, conceived, carried, and delivered a child that was not only the son of God, but God himself, and yet, when something of a metaphysical nature comes into their own lives, all of a sudden it’s a coincidence, or a happenstance, a misunderstanding, or, most ludicrous of all, the work of some evil entity with a pitchfork and a pointed tail. If it comes to someone they know, it’s psychobabble, or that person isn’t getting enough rest, or somebody needs to conduct an intervention. If it comes to some stranger and makes the nightly news or the afternoon street corner, that individual is either a charlatan, or nuts, or has stopped taking his medication, or wants their money. Most times that is the case. But, once in a while, it is not.”
“Not very dammed often,” Crockett said.
“That’s true,” Ivy said, “but examine motive for a moment. Nobody here is attempting to fool anyone, extort money from anyone, make headlines, get noticed, or personally profit or benefit from this situation in which we find ourselves in any way. No one is attempting to advance their belief system, gain converts, or give an interview with some sensational supermarket rag. Nobody here has anything to personally gain. Not me, Marta, Clete, Ruby, you or Salvatori.”
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