Lady Killer

by Lisa Scottoline

  Mary’s heart wrenched. It would be a disaster for Dhiren.

  “I helped him with the diary, but he had to read it himself, out loud. They mocked him. Dummy, they called him, instead of Dhiren. They mocked his accent as well. This I heard with my own ears.” Amrita’s expression remained stoic. “Imagine, with all this talk against bullying on the TV, on the news.”

  Mary thought again of Trish.

  “Last week, he got into a fight. One of the other boys called him dummy, and Dhiren hit him. The teacher, appalled, sent Dhiren home. I had a strop, a hissy fit, you call it, and now, it gets worse. I’ll show you.” Amrita stood up. “Dhiren, please come here.”

  “I got a present for you, Dhiren.” Mary reached into her briefcase, and by the time she’d pulled out the bag, the boy had arrived at the threshold, his dark eyes shining. She handed him the wrapped package. “I don’t know how to work this, but I expect a smart guy like you does.”

  “Cool!” Dhiren ripped off the paper and pulled out a shrink-wrapped box, a new game for his Game Boy.

  “Say thank you, Dhiren.” Amrita frowned.

  “Thank you!”

  “Hope you don’t have this one, it’s called Dogz.” Mary pointed to the word, though its corrupted spelling wouldn’t help the cause. “You choose a puppy and you get to name it.”

  “Dhiren, bend your head down for me,” Amrita said, and the boy bent over while his mother rooted around in his gorgeous hair, then exposed a bloody scab on his scalp. “See, Mary. Look at this.” Then she let the hair go and displayed another scab behind his ear, bloodier. “And see this, here.”

  “Who did this to him?” Mary asked, disgusted. “The kid he fought with?”

  “Not him.” Amrita removed her hand, and Dhiren straightened up, his knees wiggling again. “Son. Tell Miss DiNunzio what happened in school.”

  “Did someone hit you?” Mary asked, softly.

  Dhiren shook his head.

  “No,” Amrita answered for him. “The hair is gone in patches. It’s pulled out at the root.”

  “Yikes.” Mary could only imagine how much that hurt. “Who pulled your hair, Dhiren? Please, tell me.”

  Amrita answered, “He goes in the boys’ room and pulls it out himself.”

  Mary gasped, astonished, but Amrita remained impassive.

  “He does it himself. He’s so upset, so frustrated, he’s tearing his own hair out. It started last week. Tell her why you do this, son.”

  Dhiren kept looking down, his new video game forgotten. “I don’t know. I go and do it. I can’t help it.”

  “You can help it,” Amrita snapped. “You must not do it. Simply, you must not.”

  “Dhiren,” Mary interrupted, “can I ask you a favor? When you feel like pulling out your hair, could you please pretend your hair is like a puppy and pat it instead? Like in the game?”

  Dhiren nodded. “Can I go now?”

  “Yes, you can,” Mary answered, though she knew he was asking his mother. “Go. Play. Have fun.”

  Dhiren hurried off, leaving the two women in the still kitchen.

  Amrita’s features slackened, and she surrendered to a sadness as familiar as an old sweater. “Please, Mary,” she whispered, over the untouched tea. “Won’t you save my son?”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” Mary answered, sick at heart. She had no better answer. The law was failing everyone today. Or she was.

  Outside the kitchen window, it was getting darker.

  And nightfall was Trish’s deadline.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A troubled Mary left Amrita’s house and stood outside for a moment, surveying the street. A cold night had fallen but lights were on in the rowhomes, glowing a warm gold. TVs flickered behind gauze curtains, sending bluish flashes into the night. Down the street, a young woman stood smoking on her stoop, the cigarette tip burning red.

  He’ll kill me. Tonight.

  Mary slid her BlackBerry from her purse, ignored the e-mail, and hit Redial. She listened to the phone ring and ring, but there was no answer at Trish’s mother’s house. Where was Trish now? Was she okay or was she lying dead somewhere? Mary hit End, slid the phone back into her purse, and scanned the city skyline, looking for answers that weren’t there.

  She hadn’t gone two steps when a door opened and Elvira Rotunno reappeared, a stocky silhouette in the doorway, her timing too good to be coincidental. She called, “Yo, Mare, did you eat yet?” she asked, which came out like Jeet jet?

  “Yes,” Mary lied again. “I gotta run.”

  “Why don’t you come in for some dessert? Dom wants to say hi.”

  “No thanks, gotta go.” Mary looked around for a cab, or a gun to shoot herself.

  “Where you goin’ this time a night?”

  “To my parents’,” Mary heard herself answer, though she hadn’t thought of it until this minute. It was a good idea. She needed an escape, a meal, and a hug, but not in that order.

  “Hold on then. Dom can give you a ride. You won’t get a cab out here, you know that.”

  “I can walk.”

  “To your parents’? That’s twenty blocks.”

  Mary made a mental note to move. “I’ll get a bus.”

  “Here he is.” Elvira was joined at the door by an equally wide silhouette in jeans and an Eagles sweatshirt.

  “Ma,” Dominic bellowed. “I can’t drive nowhere, you keep forgettin’. I got no license since the DUI.”

  Gulp.

  Suddenly a silvery Prius turned the corner and slowed to a stop in front of the rowhouse. “Oh, here’s my Ant’n’y.” Elvira walked down the steps, holding on to the wrought-iron rail. “He can take you home, Mare.” When she reached the sidewalk, she pulled Mary close and whispered in her ear, “I’d fix you up with Ant’n’y, but he’s gay.”

  Perfect.

  Mary turned in time to see Anthony emerge from the driver’s side of the Prius. She didn’t know him from high school, but she knew only the boys who needed tutoring. Anthony Rotunno looked like a nice guy; tall, slim, and ridiculously well dressed in a brown leather jacket, white shirt, and charcoal pants.

  “Ant, this is Mary DiNunzio,” Elvira said, gesturing. “You know Mary. Her parents live down the block from Cousin-Pete-With-The-Nose. Can you give her a ride home?”

  “Sure, Mary, climb in.” Anthony smiled, opened the passenger-side door, and gestured her inside while he crossed to the front stoop, kissed his mother on the cheek, and handed her an envelope. “Sorry, Ma, I almost forgot.”

  “Love you, Ant. Such a good son.” Elvira gave him an extra kiss on the cheek, and he hustled back to the car and climbed in.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Mary said, when he slammed the door.

  “Sure.” Anthony put the car in gear and they took off. The car was quiet, with all manner of glowing gauges on the dashboard and a politically correct hum coming from the engine. “It’s the least I can do, after what you did for my mother. She’s in love with her new awning. I never saw somebody so excited about molded plastic.”

  “Fiberglass.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Mary smiled. “It’s the simple things.”

  Anthony laughed. “So where we going?”

  Mary told Anthony the address and relaxed into the neat little car. She could see in the dim light that he had a handsome profile, with thick, dark hair, big brown eyes, and a slim, straight nose. His cologne was on the strong side, but it only reminded Mary of her old friend Brent Polk, who was also gay. Brent had passed years ago, and she still missed him. She felt instantly comfy with Anthony because of Brent, like a gay associative principle.

  Anthony said, “My mother wants to hook you up with Dom. She loves you, and she smells grandchildren. Fee-fi-fo-fum.”

  Mary moaned. “Uh-oh.”

  “It’s a love match. You can keep him out of jail, free.”

  Mary smiled. “So what do you do for a living?”

  “I’m on sabbatical from St. John’s to writ
e a book. Nonfiction. I published one modest volume on the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Happily, the critics thought so, and both of my readers agreed. Now I’m working on another, about Carlo Tresca.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He was an anarchist, a contemporary of Emma Goldman, who was shot and killed in New York in 1943. His murder was never solved.” Anthony steered the car around the corner, negotiating double-parkers with a native’s skill, and they picked up speed past the rowhouses, lighted front windows, and people walking mutts. “They think it was the Mob who did it, or somebody against the unions he was trying to organize.”

  “Whoa.” Mary considered it. “So these are Italian-American subjects.”

  “Exactly. I teach Italian-American studies.”

  “My life is Italian-American studies.”

  Anthony laughed.

  “So what do you do about Carlo Tresca? Research the case?”

  “Research it and educate people. Right now I’m trying to subpoena the rest of his FBI file, under the Freedom of Information Act. The forms are a real pain.”

  “You don’t need a subpoena, just a request.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I can help you with that,” Mary said before she realized she didn’t have the time to help anybody with anything.

  “Would you mind if I called you, to pick your brain?”

  “Not at all.” Mary dug in her purse for her wallet, extracted a business card, and stuck it on the console as they stopped at a red light.

  “Thanks.” Anthony smiled warmly, and Mary felt a pang of sadness for Brent, then for Dhiren and Trish, and for everything that had gone so very wrong.

  “It’s good to go home,” she blurted out, her chest suddenly tight.

  “It’s always good to go home,” Anthony agreed.

  “How nice you come viz’!” Vita DiNunzio cried, meeting Mary in the living room, throwing her soft arms around her, and enveloping her in a hug redolent of old-fashioned Aqua Net and fresh basil.

  “Honey!” her father boomed, wrapping her in his embrace, completing the one-two punch of the DiNunzio love attack.

  “Hey, Pop, long time, no see,” Mary said, and they laughed, them at her joke, and she at the joyful realization that she could come home whenever she wanted, get loved up, and forget about bad things, at least temporarily. She wanted to drown her sorrows in tomato sauce, having long ago realized she was an emotional eater. After all, what other reason was there to eat?

  Her father kept his heavy arm around her, her mother took her other hand, and together they half-led and half-carried her like a parental sedan chair to the kitchen, The Place Where Time Stopped. The small room was bright, ringed with white wood cabinets and white Formica counters, unchanged since Mary’s girlhood. A church calendar on the wall depicted an old-school Jesus against a cerulean background, his eyes so far heavenward the whites showed, and next to him were photos of Pope John, JFK, and Frank Sinatra, attached with yellowed Scotch tape. Wedged behind the switchplate was a brittle spray of palm and Mass cards, the fancy ones laminated. The collection had grown since last month, but Mary didn’t want to think about that.

  “So, how are you guys?” she asked, sitting down. On the table were a few old screwdrivers, one with a yellow plastic handle that she would always remember as one of her father’s tools. “You fixing things, Pop?”

  “Your mother’s put me to work.” Her father pulled up his chair opposite her, easing heavily into the seat and placing a hand flat on the table.

  From the stove, her mother answered, “For…macchina da cucire.”

  “Your sewing machine?” Mary translated. Her mother, an Italian immigrant, had spent her working life sewing lampshades in the basement of this house, having almost gone blind with the effort. Mary didn’t get it. “You sewing again, Ma?”

  “Si. Your father, he fix alla for me. Alla work good now.” Her mother’s face lit up, and her small brown eyes flared behind thick glasses whose stems disappeared into teased white hair, like an airplane into clouds.

  “Your mother’s got a business idea,” her father said, with a soft smile. “Tell her, Veet.”

  “È vero, Maria,” her mother answered, her flowered back turned as she twisted on the gas under their dented perk coffeepot, then went into the refrigerator, fetched a pot of tomato sauce, and set it on the stove near the dish rack. Her parents didn’t own a coffeemaker or a dishwasher; her mother was the coffeemaker and her father the dishwasher. The DiNunzios were like the Amish, only with brighter clothes.

  “What’s the idea, Ma?” Mary asked, mystified.

  “Aspett’, Maria, aspett’.” Her mother turned the knob to fire up the gravy pot, then scurried from the kitchen and disappeared into the darkened dining room.

  Mary turned to her father. “She’s starting a business, Pop? She doesn’t have to work, does she?” She offered them money all the time, but they consistently turned her down, their finances a state secret.

  “Nah, she wants to work, and the babysitting took too much outta her.” Her father shrugged happily. “What’s the harm?”

  “Okay, but let me get her a new machine. She can’t use that old one from the cellar.”

  “The Singer with the pedal? Runs like a top.”

  “Pop, please.” Mary moaned. “We have electricity now.”

  “She loves that machine.”

  Mary gave up. Usually, you couldn’t fight progress, but progress never met Vita and Mariano DiNunzio. “Okay, you win. Tell me, how’s Angie? You hear anything?”

  “She’s still in Tunisia. Says she’s fine.”

  “When’s she coming home?” Mary asked, suddenly missing her sister, a stab of longing like a phantom pain.

  “She’ll be back in three months, the letter said. I’ll show you later, it’s upstairs.” Her father leaned over, his elbows on the table. “Hey, what did Bernice say? She gonna apologize about Dean?”

  Oops. “I forgot. I’m sorry. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay, Mare. Don’t worry.”

  It got Mary thinking. “Pop, you hear anything about Trish Gambone lately?”

  “From high school? She was one o’ the fast ones, right?”

  “Yes.” Mary hadn’t heard the term in years. “She was in my office today. She’s living with a guy in the Mob.”

  “That, I heard from Jimmy Pete. He said the wiseguy is that kid you used to teach. Remember him?”

  Boy, do I. “Yes, it is him.”

  Her father clucked. “I thought he was a nice kid, but you never know.”

  “No, you never do.” Mary didn’t want to dwell on it, not here. The coffeepot started to boil but her father didn’t hear it, despite the hearing aid curled behind his ear like a plastic comma. She rose to get the coffee and turned off the gas under the pot before it percolated into its eleventh hour, then retrieved three mismatched cups and saucers. She set the table and got the pot, then poured her father a cup in a glistening arc, releasing the dense aroma of DiNunzio Blend, coffee distilled to brown caffeine.

  “Eccoli,” her mother said from the door, and Mary set the coffeepot down in astonishment. Displayed across her mother’s arms was a perfect little gown of white cotton. Layers of miniature pleats fanned out from its sweet yoke, crosshatched by the finest threads, and its neckline curved like a tiny shell. Cap sleeves puffed from either side like the ears of a child’s teddy bear. Smiling, her mother asked, “Che carino, no?”

  “Ma, this is beautiful. It’s amazing!” Mary stepped closer to see better. “You made this?”

  “She makes christening dresses,” her father answered, with quiet pride. “She did that one by hand and three others. Each one takes her a week, so I figured we had to get the old machine goin’ again.”

  “It’s lovely!” Mary marveled, and her mother beamed, displaying the dress like a human store window. “How did this come about?”

  “She was s
weepin’ the stoop, and Mrs. D’Orazio said she was gonna spend $150 on a christening dress for her granddaughter. Your mother tol’ her she could make it cheaper and she did. Then she sold it for seventy-five.” Her father clapped his heavy hands together. “For a dress the size of a baby doll.”

  “Si, Maria, è vero.” Her mother nodded happily, and her father continued:

  “So then the grandbaby had it on at the christening, and Mrs. D told everybody how cheap it was, and now all them want the dresses for their grandkids. Then this Puerto Rican lady from Wolf Street found out and she told all the other Puerto Ricans in their parish, and you know they love to dress their kids up.”

  Mary flinched. “Don’t say that, Pop.”

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  “It sounds racist.”

  “I’m not racist, you know that.” Her father looked wounded, his forehead troubled, and Mary felt horrible. Matty DiNunzio wasn’t racist in the least. He’d been a foreman and always gave his crew an equal shot at jobs and overtime, even bringing them home to dinner in an era when it raised eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry, Pop. I’m just tired.” Mary sighed, and on the stove, the gravy began to bubble, warming the kitchen with the aroma of tomatoes, garlic, basil, and fresh, peppery sausage.

  “I know, I can see.” Her father sipped his coffee, then his smile returned. “Anyway, your mother’s in business. She’s got twelve orders already.”

  “Wow.” Mary managed a smile, and her gaze strayed to the little dress, so small and white. She could almost imagine the baby in the gown, pure and pink, its arms sticking out of the puffy sleeves. Her husband Mike had wanted kids, but she had always thought that would come later. But she had been wrong about that and many other things. A wave of despair swept over her, as she stood at the intersection of life and death.

  “Mare?” asked her father.

  “Maria?” echoed her mother.

  Mary put on a happy face. “I’m hungry,” she said, and her parents brightened, knowing exactly what to do.