Vincent’s voice called, “You’re not finished. You couldn’t be. Keep reading. You’ll see my surprise.”
Lilly looked back at the camera and read, “You stole from me. Now I steal from you. You stole my …” Lilly hesitated and looked at the camera, “life. I steal your wife.” Lilly whispered, “Prose, isn’t it?” She seemed aware of a reprimand from the off side. “If you had come to California when I told you to, this could have been avoided.”
Lilly looked at the camera again, “Rambles, doesn’t he?” She then spoke in a wooden voice, “This will be over soon.”
Lilly stopped reading. With the high-pitched screeching of metal being dragged, Lilly’s expression changed from wise guy to alert to fearful. She reacted to something. “No, no! You can’t!”
She was yanked from the chair. There was a piece of construction paper taped on the back of the seat where she had been. It read:Next the love scene.
The picture ended, and the film went to snow.
Tony jumped up. “He can’t! He can’t! She’s pregnant.”
The NYPD detective walked to the VCR and ejected the tape. He spoke to the FBI agent. “We’ll have to have copies of this. Between your lab and ours maybe we can …”
Tony stood between them, shocked by their lack of reaction. “He’s going to rape her.”
The FBI agent said, “A man who could punch the pretty face of a pregnant woman is capable of acting without …”
Nick supplied, “He’s got no soul.”
Tony turned away, but the images he saw in their living room – the Lego’s in the Lego corner, her piano, the baby blanket Lilly had started to embroider to get her “in the mood” – were more than he could bear. He started to sob.
Nick turned to the detectives. “Why don’t you get your copies? We’ll meet you back at Lockout.”
They left after conferring with Nick and Mike at the door.
Mike said to Tony’s shaking back, “I’m going back to Lockout.”
Tony was unable to answer.
Nothing was heard from Vincent that night. Mike slept on the sofa at the della Robbias’. Nick slept in one of the twin’s beds. Tony walked the night away.
The next day, the staff of Lockout came to the office, working uneasily as a deadline approached. Ravi and Catherine fared the best, disappearing into the clean lab.
Tony insisted on going to Vincent’s apartment. It was a boxy, one-room. Photographs of Tony were all over the wall. In some, he was alone. Some were of Jay or Lilly or his whole family.
The FBI agent said, “All these picture …I’m sure he noticed that you’re smiling only in the ones with your wife and kids. See this one and that one; it looks like you threw back your head to laugh at something your wife said. He knew how to rip out your heart.”
Tony walked around, trying not to miss anything. “Tell me about the VCR tape. What was there I didn’t see?”
The FBI agent said, “The street noises were minimal. It must have been a quiet street or very high up. We filtered and amplified it, taking out her voice. We couldn’t find any distinguishing noises or sounds. The backdrop was a white sheet. There wasn’t any natural light. The flickering quality was probably caused by camping lanterns.”
The NYPD detective interrupted. “That’s where we differ. She’s not high up. She’s in a basement. That scraping when he’s dragging …probably a cot …across cement, not wood or linoleum or a rug.”
The FBI agent conceded, “You’re probably right. Did you see her fingers?”
“No, what?”
“Her left hand’s holding the paper with two fingers showing. Her right hand has three. I thought maybe 23rd or 32nd street. We tested the noise levels along each block of both streets. They both had distinctive sounds that would have come through the filter.”
“There is something in here that tells us where he is.” Tony held up Halibeg’s journal. “We have to get back to Lockout. I’ll take the journal.”
Both detectives balked.
Tony asserted, “Vincent is …he would leave a code or something. It’s what he does, he writes code. I’ll read it there. I’ll find something.”
“It’s evidence. We should all scour it.”
They were held up on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway behind a burning car. When they finally made it to Manhattan, Tony had missed the arrival of a package. It lay untouched on his desk, wrapped in brown paper. Tony unwrapped it carefully. A sheet lay under the brown paper and over the taped box. It read: I wouldn’t rape your pregnant wife.
Tony slit the tape and lifted the slit edge to reveal a jar that contained a bloody, gelatinous mass. He lifted the jar. Air sucked out of his lungs as he recognized it as viscera. A piece of paper was under the jar. It read: But, she’s not pregnant anymore.
Tony lifted the jar to the light. He made out the fetus through the bloody covering. He slowly lowered the jar. He could hear his own pulse in his ears.
“Jesus!” Mike exclaimed.
The horror was reflected on the other men’s faces. Tony put the jar back in the box, walked out of the office, and kept going. He walked, not seeing around him, onward to Broadway and then north. He stopped at 34th street.
Nick, who was behind him, caught up and waited for Tony to talk.
Tony said in a low, flat voice, “How could anyone do that? Lilly …Lilly …Lil is so …How?”
Nick said, “I don’t know. That’s what’s kept me a cop all these years. Some people are so off, so wrong, they have to be stopped. Tony, we have to get back. We have to find Lilly. She is probably bleeding now, hemorrhaging. We have to go through the journal and look at the tape again and again. We have to find her.”
Tony turned and followed Nick back.
The fetus was no longer there. Tony didn’t ask and no explanation was offered. Mike was making copies of the journal. They stayed over the journals into the night.
Nick, who would usually side with a city cop over a fed, could not stomach the NYPD detective. He told Mike, “That guy hasn’t felt anything since the first Nixon administration.”
Tony dozed off at one in the morning. He was at his desk. He awoke with an internal explosion after only forty-five minutes. He stayed in position, even after realizing his head was on the spot where the fetus had been. He could not shake the feeling his wife was dead. Finally he stood and walked around, finding himself alone.
“Tony, Tony! I’ve got it.” Nick sprinted through the front door and said, “In the journal. I’ve been going over it. Look, Look! See the first letter on every page. I wrote down the letters They spell out DO YOU REMEMBER WHERE I LIVED AT BRIGHTON?”
“He lived in the Bronx. Up by Montefiore Hospital, by Woodlawn …Off Jerome Avenue. I don’t know if I could find it. He had a roommate named Al Scotto.”
Nick turned to a NYPD detective. “Wake people up! The registrars have records. What year did he graduate?”
“1974. Vincent that is. Al Scotto was a student, but I don’t know if he graduated. Let’s go to the Bronx.”
Nick nodded, “We are going up Jerome. We’ll see if something rings Tony’s bells. We’ll call in.”
Nick drove. Once in the Bronx, they went up Jerome Avenue under the El. Nothing jogged Tony’s memory.
Nick asked, “Could you hear the trains from their place?”
“I was only there a couple of times and not for long. I don’t remember hearing the subways. I remember it was close to Montefiore.”
“I’ll head up Gun Hill Road.”
Tony told Nick to stop almost immediately. He saw a church across from the medical center. “Coming down from Yonkers, I remember he said if you got to Saint Anne’s you went too far.”
Nick suggested, “We’ll drive along as if we got off the Thruway at 233rd Street.”
Tony said, “Bear left.” When they reached Woodlawn Terminal, they continued slowly. Tony said, “Wait. Down here, I think.”
Nick said, “Right. It’s 230th Street, like the two a
nd the three Lilly was showing.”
They crept along 230th Street. It ran only a short distance between Woodlawn cemetery and Van Cortland Park. Nick pulled over. They stepped out.
They went building to building, checking the mailboxes.
Tony called, “This tile around the doorway, I recognize it.”
The door was locked. Nick rang all the doorbells and pulled out his badge. Tony kicked in the door. They came to a common hall and stopped.
“Basement,” Tony said.
They found a doorway to the basement stairs. They went down cautiously. A fetid, metallic odor became stronger as they descended. There was a common laundry room and a boiler room. The smell grew stronger.
Tony said, “What is that?”
Nick answered stoically, “Blood.” He checked Tony’s reaction and then said, “This area is too small for this blooding. There has to be another section.”
They found a door nearly hidden behind a furnace. The door had a clearance of five feet. Tony ducked, stepped in, and knew they had found the place. The white sheet used as a backdrop was visible suspended from the ceiling. One hem touched the cement floor and lay in a pool of blood that had wicked to a red arc over a third of the sheet. Tony walked around the sheet filled with trepidation.
His dread was realized. Lilly lay on a mattress that was saturated with blood. He knelt beside her, knowing it was too late. She was dead. He reached out to touch her face but drew back immediately as her face felt cold, waxen, and unnatural. He lifted her hand as he knelt in her blood.
Nick gave him time and then said, “Tony, I’m sorry. I’m going to call in.”
Tony said, “Vincent?”
“I don’t know. He’s gone.”
*************************
30. March 1986
Tony learned of Joe’s death on his weekly call home.
“Tony? This is Issy. I’m glad you called. Your mother is with Rafiel. Joe died this morning. Where are you now?”
“Seattle. When is the funeral?”
“Monday. Will you come? I’ll bet your kids would love to see you.”
“How are the kids? It sounds quiet there.”
“They’re here. They are quiet, too quiet. I help your Mom take care of them. Tony, come home. I’m sorry you haven’t found Halibeg, but your kids lost both of their parents.”
“I’ll come for the funeral.”
Issy took a deep breath and decided to lay it out. “Don’t come if you’re only going to abandon them again.”
Tony said, “Jesus, Issy. Nice talking to you.”
Tony took the red eye to Kennedy. Issy’s words came back to him. Although he had occasionally been close behind, Vincent had eluded him. He was no closer now than the previous summer when he had taken an indefinite leave of absence and gone after Halibeg.
After the business moved, Tony had physically gone to work daily, but the day to day running of the business had been taken over by Jay and Dennis. The children had remained with Isabel as Tony was too unaware of his surroundings to parent. One day Tony was getting an update from the FBI when they mentioned they thought they had located Vincent in Miami. Tony hung up the phone and walked out of his office drove to the airport and flew to Miami. With no planning or forethought the hunt was on.
Tony had gone for a time in mourning when he could not remember Lilly’s face or her voice and could not bring to mind specific memories of her. He was filled with guilt.
He had dreamt of Lilly lately. He had started to recall her more vividly while awake. He thought about her. He concluded her shattered family had scarred her life. Tony was facing the fact that Lilly would be heartbroken if she knew that her children’s family had been similarly shattered.
He arrived at Della Robbia Central in the afternoon. His mother seemed younger than he remembered. She asked to speak to him privately after the wake.
Owen, who was now four, played with a hand-held computer game almost constantly. He accepted hugs from his father but would not meet his eyes.
Tiana clung to him from the moment he arrived. She followed him room to room, even waiting outside the bathroom. She cried easily.
Rita avoided him. She obediently came when called, but the little girl who performed Itsy Bitsy Spider and I’m a Little Teapot was long gone. Rita had eyes that questioned his motives when he spoke to her.
The children were bedded fitfully in the room that he and Frank had once shared and that later had become Tanta’s. Now it seemed small and crowded for its three occupants.
Isabel was waiting for him at the kitchen table. Wine glasses were on the table, signaling that Isabel meant business. Tony sat down ready to listen.
“The children are sad. I remember Lilly always sang to them and read to them and played with them. Now they are sad. Owen blames himself.”
“Why? Owen is a little kid.”
“Owen watches TV. He blames himself for not defending his mother.”
“Oh, God. Owen’s a baby. He couldn’t have stopped a man.”
“I know that. I’m telling you what Owen thinks. I can’t shake it from him. Rita never cries. That little girl scares me. She’s like a turtle who didn’t like what she saw so she pulled back in her shell. She’s only in first grade. If she doesn’t come out soon, I don’t think she ever will.”
“I see that in her Ma,” Tony agreed.
“Tiana is nervous. She has dreams. She wets her pants in school. Tony, I’m doing all I can, but they are so hurt and so sad.” Isabel felt around for words. “That Vincent Halibeg …He’ll win everything if your kids grow up all messed up. I’m sorry you didn’t find him. But what if you did? What? Would Lilly want you going to jail for some bloody vendetta? Lilly loved you and the children.”
“Ma, I know you are right. I’ll get back now. I’ll open the house in Walkill. I’ll go back to work. I don’t know what I’ll do with them while I work.”
“I’ll go with you if that’s what you are asking. I don’t know if I can do it all. Issy has been helping me here.”
“You would move to Walkill with us?”
Isabel answered, “My whole life …I quit school to work two jobs when my father died. I raised Frank and you. I took care of my mother and then Tito. These kids need me, but I need them too. I loved Lilly like a daughter. It took a while. Now, I see Lilly in these kids. I see you in Owen, especially since his nose was broken like yours was by my sister. It goes around, you see? It goes around.”
“Ma, that house is a big old farmhouse. There are six bedrooms. We’ll hire a housekeeper. You don’t drive. Walkill …well it’s not like Yonkers. It’s miles to town. Frank won’t be downstairs. There’s no Della Robbia Central. Nick and Issy aren’t downstairs. Sue won’t be down the hall. Rafiel won’t be downstairs.”
“That’s OK. I’ve thought about it. The kids could start a new life. I could keep this place to visit, but your kids need me, and they need to make a new start. But only if you can leave some of the sadness and guilt behind, Tony.”
“I’ll try, Ma. I’ll try.”
The funeral was early Monday morning. The children asked why Joe had a coffin when their mother had a vase. Tony explained cremation and burial. He couldn’t remember where Lilly’s ashes were. Tony had an eerie feeling that this was really Lilly’s funeral. He had no memory of Lilly’s service.
Jay and Hillary came to the funeral. Tony asked them to stick around. He tried to extricate himself from Tiana’s nervous grip. He finally freed himself to walk them out. He told them he was returning to work and moving up to Walkill with the children.
“I don’t know how to ask this, but last year, I don’t …remember any of Lilly’s service. Do you know what happened to her ashes?”
Hillary said, “I have them Tony. You were so lost. I hoped you’d find your way out of the fog. Then you would know what you wanted to do with them.”
Tony returned to his mother’s apartment to find Tiana crying at the door. Owen had gone back to hi
s video game. Rita stood in the kitchen doorway staring at him. Her eyes said, “I didn’t expect you back.”
Tony got their jackets and told them to come along; they would “follow their noses.” They ended up at the park that had been a backdrop for much of his life. Tony found himself telling the children about the day he had seen Lilly there for the first time in four years, He sat on a bench and laughed at the ugly two-toned tuxedo. He told the children how skinny Lilly had looked.
“All I wanted to do was kiss her.”
Rita moved a little closer to him. He told how Lilly had flirted with his friends when she was only thirteen, telling them she was Irene Dunne. The children didn’t ask who Irene Dunne was because they didn’t want Tony to stop talking. The words spilled out of him.
He told them how much he loved each of them. He told Owen he was proud of the way he tried to protect his mother. He touched the tip of his nose and said, “You’ll always remember how you fought for her.”
Rita asked, “What can we do to remember her?”
Tony told her, “It’s a good idea to do something. We’ll have to think about it. I loved my Grandmother D’Agusta. She was kind and gentle and very wise. We named you Tatiana, after her. Lilly loved her grandmother O’Dwyer. I met her a couple of times. She laughed a lot. Lilly remembered how she would bring cut-outs and ribbons. She named you Rita for her. Owen you were named for Lilly’s father. Lilly’s father loved her with all his heart. He died when she was a little girl. We’ll have to find something to remember Lilly forever.”
“Maybe we can get a dog,” Tiana said seriously.
“I don’t think I could ever call a dog Lilly, honey,” Tony said. “But maybe …maybe, you guys listen to this, your mom wanted to plant cranberry bushes where it is boggy and flowers to feed the birds and little animals. Maybe we could plant a meadow at our new house and put the ashes from Mommy’s body to feed the bushes and wildflowers. We’ll call it Lilly’s meadow.”
The children considered it, but gave no answer. Owen stood and led his sisters to a hole in the ground near the river.
Owen said, “Uncle Frank said something lives in the holes.”
A Yonkers Kinda Girl Page 50
