Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery

by Rosalie Knecht

  “Drowned in the river.”

  He laughed. “I’m a very good swimmer,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  We seemed to be collaborating, covertly, in delaying our exit from the car.

  “My parents are here?” Félix said after a minute.

  “In the park,” I said.

  He leaned forward and put his forehead on the dash. “And if they are not here?” he said to his shoes.

  “Well,” I said. My eyes stung. “I hope they are.”

  We crossed Riverside Drive on a footbridge and descended into Fort Washington Park. The trees were still bare, but here and there green things lit up the dark undergrowth. The sun was low now over the Palisades, and we were blinded as we walked downward, along a winding path past tennis courts, into the cold shadow of the George Washington Bridge. It was still too chilly for the park to be busy; the lawns that opened here and there among the trees were empty, with occasional dog walkers and old men. I wrapped my scarf more tightly, and even Félix was moved to button up his coat.

  “Where I died,” Félix said.

  “What?” I said, startled.

  “I died there,” he said, indicating the river, which lay before us in its most oceanic state, deep blue, white-capped to the shore by the evening wind.

  “You certainly did,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’m a ghost,” he said. “I can do anything.”

  He was walking ahead of me and I wanted to pull him back, slow him down. El Jabalí had told me that the Ibarras would wait for us at the red lighthouse that stood on the rocks at the foot of the titanic bridge. I could see it already, almost orange in the evening light, dwarfed by the immense network of steel girders above it, with a few figures grouped in its small territory: men fishing and couples looking at the view, taking photographs of each other. The wind sliced through my coat.

  Félix stopped. I almost bumped into him, then looked to see where he was looking. A couple in dark coats stood at the railing, close together against the wind, facing us. As I watched them, I saw the woman cover her mouth with a gloved hand.

  I was warm all at once, flushed, shaking. Félix walked toward them, and they came to meet him. I watched them embrace. His mother was weeping. His father turned away and pulled his glasses off.

  I waited a minute, until the three of them broke apart and Altagracia Ibarra turned in my direction. She was small, her hair sharply bobbed under a wool beret. I walked up to her, unsure what to say. There was a great deal but there was also very little. “Hello,” I said.

  “Who are you?” Altagracia said. “He didn’t tell us. Just that he’d seen a photo.”

  “I’m Vera,” I said.

  “He told us to be prepared to run,” she said, “in case it was a trap. He told us it was our decision to come or not come.”

  “El Jabalí did?”

  “Yes. And he sent a man with us.” She nodded toward the end of the narrow road that led down the hill, where a sedan was idling, a man in it watching us over the top of the Daily News.

  “He said he would,” I said.

  “We looked for Félix every day,” Dionisio Ibarra interrupted, pressing his fingertips to his eyes. He was tall, wearing a well-made black coat, but with an untidy gray beard beginning across his cheeks. He hugged me, smelling like cigarettes and old coffee. They both looked exhausted.

  “They had taken our passports,” said Altagracia when Dionisio had let me go.

  “I know,” I said.

  “We couldn’t come. But then Esmeralda stopped writing and we had to get papers somehow.”

  Félix’s eyes and nose were red. He stepped away to look over the railing. His father went with him, one hand on his back.

  “My husband drove to Sheepshead Bay every day,” Altagracia said. “We didn’t know what to do. I got the death certificate for Esmeralda but it didn’t help. We went to all the hospitals and the medical examiner’s office.” She squinted at me. “Who are you?” she said again. “Are you with the CIA?”

  “No,” I said. “Two people came to me last winter and asked me to find your son. They pretended to be your husband’s aunt and uncle.”

  “His aunt and uncle?”

  “They said you and your husband were in prison.”

  She looked shocked. “We thought someone might come after us when we left the Dominican Republic,” she said. “But we didn’t think they knew about Félix, where we had sent him. They must have been reading our mail. We even had someone else post it for us—but they’re everywhere. Spies for Balaguer. Everyone talks.” Then she stepped back, her eyes narrowing. “Where are they now, these people who lied to you?”

  “I told them he was dead. I showed them some fake records. They won’t bother you. It’s a long story.”

  “Why did you do all this?”

  I shrugged, embarrassed. Some need of mine, exposed like this. “He was alone,” I said. “Where are you going to go now?”

  “Far, far,” she said. “Now that we have our son, we can make the arrangements.”

  Félix and his father were standing shoulder to shoulder at the railing, and his father was speaking to him, but I couldn’t catch the words.

  “He has a cat in Peekskill,” I said.

  “A cat?”

  “I’m sure he’ll tell you,” I said. “But you may be taking a cat to wherever you’re going.”

  She looked puzzled and then laughed. “We’ll take a dozen cats,” she said. “Whatever he wants.”

  CHAPTER 22

  I thought of getting back onto the West Side Elevated Highway, but instead I drove south through Washington Heights and Harlem, down into the Upper West Side. I was passing the enormous building site for the new concert hall on Columbus Avenue when I realized I was only a few blocks from where she lived.

  I had only a minute to decide what I wanted to do. I turned onto West Sixty-Second Street, thinking that if I didn’t see a place to park, I would just go on home—that was the kind of game I played all the time. It was not a fortuitous place for parking, but I saw a space almost immediately, not fifty yards from Central Park. I backed in, turned off the engine, and climbed out right away, hoping I would be at her door before I lost my nerve.

  I was on fire with a willingness to humiliate myself. I walked north, glancing up now and then at the warmly lit facades of the grand apartment buildings whose upper windows looked out over the trees in the park. Something had shifted. Not long ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing something this stupid, but now the alternative, which was to go home again and leave everything unsaid for another day, to find my things just where I had left them and wake to another late morning in the quiet house, my dignity intact and my life utterly unchanged, felt false and useless. There was a thinness to this kind of self-preservation. It required so much evasion and restraint, and there was no reward in the end, not really. There was no proctor watching this test, to congratulate me on having avoided once again the possibility of looking foolish or dependent, hurt or unprepared. There was no prize waiting for the person who needed the least.

  I turned onto Sixty-Third Street, pursued by the wind, and passed the immense hulk of the YMCA, like a ship at anchor with lights lost in its upper reaches. The boardinghouse where Max had told me she lived huddled in its shadow, trying to match it with gothic touches around the windows and gutters. It was called, as she had said, the Aurora. The words were set in the concrete above the door, somewhat diminished by a more cheerful and modern sign that hung just below it, which said ROOMS TO LET FOR YOUNG WOMEN. I pushed through into a small lobby tiled in blue, like a changing room at a public pool. A watchman who looked as if sunlight never touched his face was sitting at the front desk, turning the pages of a newspaper.

  “I’m here to see Maxine Comstock,” I said.

  He moved slowly to a black telephone on the desk and dialed a few numbers. “A visitor here for you,” he said. I sat on a bench along the wall to wait, my heart clanging in my
chest.

  She came down after a few minutes, the slip of her, turning at the foot of the stairs. She was dressed in pink. I stood up, then didn’t know what to do.

  “Vera!” she said, for all the world as if she were happy to see me. She came and kissed my cheek. I tried to find my voice. “Are we going out?” she said. “I can get my coat.”

  “Yes, out,” I croaked.

  She went upstairs and I tried to compose myself. Some girls came in, bustling through the lobby, unlocking their mailboxes with tiny keys. Then Max was back, with her coat and handbag.

  “Well,” I said, uncertain, because I had planned only as far as a statement of grievances. “Let’s go.”

  Out on the sidewalk I could feel her peering at me. I didn’t know what to do with my face. My brain was filled with Lois’s voice saying Key West. Not having anywhere in mind to go, and not wanting to ask her for suggestions, I led us to Central Park West, to the low stone wall along the edge of the park and the desolate benches. Men in suits streamed uptown.

  “Are you all right?” Max said. She hadn’t put on a hat, and her pale hair lifted and tangled around her face. We stood under a fringe of bare trees that leaned over the wall. There were stragglers in the park, people who had been caught by the early twilight and were now making their way to the exits, lit by the tall poles along the paths.

  I saw now the problem with my course of action. Before, I had always relied on others to open the arguments that I planned to win. Here I had come to her, and therefore would have to begin this confrontation myself, which was a weak way to advance the weak position that she had hurt me and I was sad.

  “I looked for you a month ago,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Lois told me you had gone to Key West with another girl.”

  Her mouth opened. She leaned closer, then leaned back. “Sure, I did. I got back ages ago. I thought I might see you around—I tried you once or twice, but you were never home.”

  “If you had another girl,” I said, staring intently into the park as if there were anything at all worth looking at in there, “you could have just said so.”

  “Another girl? Who, Sandra?” She laughed. “Wait, Vera, did you think I had thrown you over?” I was still facing away and she took hold of the lapel of my coat. “You’re mad at me,” she said, surprised.

  “Well, I thought maybe,” I said, but the rest of the sentence escaped me. Maybe we had started something. Maybe I was on your mind, more than the rest.

  “Sandra was my roommate at Vassar,” she said. “She’s getting a divorce, so we went to Florida and lay around drinking piña coladas for a week. She’s straight as a hatpin, Vera.”

  I was taken aback. “But Lois—”

  “Lois is the worst gossip. Lois likes to imagine everyone else is having more fun than she is.”

  I tried to find my footing. She was still holding on to my coat.

  “I just was never sure if you—if you felt like I did,” I said. “The way you stayed in Poughkeepsie that day—and it was always hard to reach you. It just seemed like maybe I was making a fool of myself. So I stopped.”

  “You’re such a coward,” she said. In a smooth gesture she worked her hand in between the buttons of my coat, and I felt her thumb press against my stomach. I started and nearly fell on her. She was a shade shorter than I was and she looked up at me laughing, her other hand winding around the back of my neck, into my hair. “God forbid you be a fool,” she said.

  There were people everywhere, but no one looked at us. It was the woods so close by, the new darkness, the smell of thaw, two days now past the equinox. No one could intrude. A simple idea began to knit itself together between us. She put both hands in my pockets. “Come up,” she said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not be here without:

  Masie Cochran, as brilliant as she is kind, and Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts, who has been both an advocate and a friend; Craig Popelars, a force, and the focus and intelligence of Elizabeth DeMeo and Alyssa Ogi on the editorial team; Jakob Vala, who has the eye and the range, and Diane Chonette, who brings it all together; the tireless efforts of the most pleasant people on earth, Nanci McCloskey, Molly Templeton, and Yashwina Canter; my writing group and first readers, always, Bonnie Altucher, Tom Cook, Helen Terndrup, and Jenna Leigh Evans; my parents, Peter and Katie Knecht, and brother, Rastus Knecht, who have helped and encouraged us through the most difficult two years that we’ve ever had or hope to have again; my mother-in-law, Elsa T. Leonida, who watched our baby and cooked us dozens of meals while I finished final edits on this book in an upstairs room; and Mark, who survived and keeps surviving, and whose first impulse is always to be generous.

  This book is here in spite of:

  Grief, love, and bed bugs. Pregnancy, social work, Brooklyn, the Q train, Pioneer Supermarket, laundry, a wrist brace, the blue screen of death, the stairs at 14th Street, moving twice, Twitter, a gas leak, whoever kept hacking my credit card, political despair, not enough fun and not enough sleep, occasionally too much fun, all my friends who left town, the worst thing that ever happened to us, and the best thing that ever happened to us.

  READER’S GUIDE

  1. When Vera first opens her detective agency, she finds that a number of clients are reluctant to work with her because she’s a woman. What kinds of barriers to entry did you perceive for women in her industry? Do you think any of those barriers still exist today?

  2. At the start of this book, Vera has recently finished decorating her home. What do you think Vera’s house symbolizes to her?

  3. New York City during the 1960s is a character in its own right. In what ways are the city and time period significant—thematically and atmospherically—as backdrops to Vera’s story?

  4. How does Vera’s recent breakup influence her actions?

  5. When Vera rents her office space, the landlord suggests that the front room could be where her “girl” would sit. Vera replies that she “would have to be my own girl.” What do you think Vera means when she says this?

  6. When were you most afraid for Vera’s safety?

  7. As Vera hunts down the secrets of others, she keeps her own close. What do you think is her single biggest secret, and who is she hiding it from?

  8. How do you think Vera and Maxine’s relationship would be different if it occurred in the present day? How has the landscape in America changed for queer women since the 1960s?

  9. Why do you think there are so few adult novels starring female detectives?

  10. What do you think the future holds for Vera Kelly?

  PHOTO © MICHAEL P. GERACI

  ROSALIE KNECHT is the author of Who Is Vera Kelly? and Relief Map. She is the translator of César Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind (New Directions) and a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow. She lives in New Jersey.

  The first installment in the exhilarating, page-turning Vera Kelly series, Who Is Vera Kelly? introduces an original, wry, and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.

  · AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ·

  “Vera Kelly introduces a fascinating new spy to

  literature’s mystery canon—one we hope sticks around

  long beyond this snappy, intimate debut.”

  —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

  FICTION · US $15.95 · ISBN 978-1-947793-01-9

  Copyright © 2020 Rosalie Knecht

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

  Published by Tin House, Portland, Oregon

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Knecht, Rosalie, author.

  Title: Vera kelly is not a mystery / Rosalie Knecht.

  Description: Por
tland, Oregon : Tin House, [2020] | Series: Vera Kelly series ; book 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020001634 | ISBN 9781947793798 (paperback) | ISBN 9781947793897 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Spy stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3611.N43 V47 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001634

  First US Edition 2020

  Interior design by Jakob Vala

  www.tinhouse.com