“Instinct, Nancy. Experience.”
“And a wild guess.”
Jackie said, “Nancy, I appreciate everything you’ve said here today, your concern, you want to keep us on our toes. Good. But if I can’t tell when it’s time to cover my ass—if you’ll pardon the expression—I’m in the wrong fucking business.”
14
* * *
VINCENT DROVE TO LONGPORT in the rain, down-beach to the bottom of Absecon Island. Big money, big homes, but it looked barren to him; there were so few trees. He was used to the Florida coast. Here were weathered frame beach homes out of the past next to white modern ones with round corners, as different as privies and spaceships. Maybe it would have more of a seaside resort look with the sun shining. He found Donovan’s address and was surprised to see one of the old, old ones, with peaks and gables and a porch sitting on brick stilts that circled the entire house.
He recognized the maid, the same one who opened the door in Isla Verde. She recognized him too, he could tell. But he said, “Remember me?”
Dominga smiled, shy, touching her chin. “Yes, by your bear’ you have.”
“My beard,” Vincent said. “Yeah, I’m glad I kept it. It keeps my face warm. You cold?”
“Yes, I’m cole all the time I’m here.”
She asked him to come in, please, and Vincent told her he wished he was down in Puerto Rico right now. She asked him if he wanted to see Mr. Donovan.
“I’d like to.”
“You having a har’ time to see him.”
“Not home, uh? How about missus?”
Dominga shook her head. “I think you see them at the hotel today.”
It was so quiet in the house. Still, it had a comfortable, lived-in look, bright colors in the living room, a gallery of paintings, a Taino Indian jar on the mantel. It was like an urn, or how he pictured an urn. This morning he had spoken to Linda on the phone. They had to decide what to do with Iris’s remains. Linda said, her ashes. A stainless steel urn would be thirty-nine dollars. Or they could pay up to nine hundred for solid bronze.
He said to Dominga, “I wonder if you could do me a favor,” taking a small notebook from his raincoat pocket. “Call a number for me here in Longport, Mr. Garbo’s home. You know him?”
“Mr. Garbo, yes.”
“Here’s the number. Ask for LaDonna Padgett. The name’s written there.”
“Yes, I see it.”
“If you could say to her, ‘Mr. Mora is coming over from Mr. Donovan’s house to talk to you.’ Just like that. You think you could?”
“I know how to speak on the phone,” Dominga said. “ ‘Mr. Mora is coming there from Mr. Donovan so he can talk to you.’ “
“Perfect,” Vincent said.
LaDonna said, “Is that what Tommy’s worried about? I told Jackie—he musta asked me a hundred times, ‘You sure you didn’t leave anything?’ I said, well, what would I have left? I didn’t take any my clothes off. I guess I did take off my pumps, I always do that if I’m just sitting around. You know. But I surely wasn’t gonna walk out of there without my shoes. He musta asked me a hundred times. You know, after it was in the paper and we heard what happened.” LaDonna shook her head. “Boy, I’m telling you, it’s scary.”
She had told him to hang his coat on the door of the fronthall closet so it would dry, said he could take his shoes off if he wanted, she had hers off—leading him barefoot in a heavy fisherman’s sweater that almost covered white shorts that showed about an inch of each cheek, leading him into a room of summer furniture and a wall of humid glass against the weather, a wall of gloom today, the room dim, silent.
Vincent said, “Iris was the only one took her clothes off? Nobody else?”
“I didn’t go for that one bit,” LaDonna said, “it was embarrassing. I mean since I was the only other girl, you know, that was there. Iris, she could care less. She walked around stark naked, it didn’t bother her at all. That age, you can get away with it, not worry about your butt looking like a bowl of cottage cheese. I do exercise—you ever try to lose weight off your butt? It’s impossible. I keep telling Jackie he has to lose weight—you know how he eats, and he drinks way too much . . . You want another Bloody? I think I’m ready.”
“Let me do it.”
“No, sit still.” She pushed up from the couch with an effort. “This weather, I wish I could find something to do besides watch soaps. I watch ’em with the maid but she’s off today. You like my Bloodies?”
“You make a good one.”
“Jackie taught me.”
“I think I’ll switch though, if you have scotch.”
“We have everything, crème de menthe, Southern Comfort. You like that Amaretto? It’s good.”
“Scotch’ll be fine.”
LaDonna Holly Padgett, one-time Miss Oklahoma, slipped on tinted, heavy-framed glasses, a tall girl made taller with all that blond hair piled up. She stared out at the gray mass of sky and ocean, stared for several moments, then seemed to come awake. Vincent watched her cross to the elaborate bar: her bare feet in deep shag, long white legs reaching to the shapeless fisherman’s sweater. Her thighs looked fine, dimple-free. She was still a great big Miss American beauty. He could see her up on the pageant stage telling how she loved democracy and small animals and believed in the fellowship of man. Vincent believed she’d had at least a couple of Bloodies before he arrived.
“Were you there both nights?”
LaDonna used a shot glass to measure exactly an ounce and a half of vodka. “I don’t know what you mean.” She poured it carefully into her glass, deliberated and added a quick splash from the bottle.
“At the apartment.”
“Oh, you mean with Benny? Sure, well, you know Jackie had to wait on his beck and call, go everyplace with him.” She put in three teaspoons of Lea & Perrins, hunched down close to the rim of the glass to shake in one, two, three drops of Tabasco.
“Tommy didn’t say too much.” Vincent watched her add tomato juice and stir. “I wasn’t sure which night he was there.”
“Who?”
“Tommy.”
“You want that on the rocks?”
“Please.”
She brought him a generous scotch, started toward the couch and stopped. “What do you mean, which night? Tommy wasn’t there either time.” She frowned, “Or was he? Now you got me confused.”
Vincent sat in a deep, slipcovered chair, ashtray on the arm. He lighted a cigarette, watching as she sat down on the floor, careful of her drink, and leaned back against the couch.
“I think I’m safer here,” LaDonna said. “Can’t fall off, can I? I been feeling kinda fuzzy, like I’m coming down with the flu or something.”
Vincent told her he was supposed to check on everyone who was at the apartment either night, make sure they hadn’t left anything. Not even hotel matches. Tommy didn’t want it to get back to him. LaDonna said she imagined not, it could sure put a monkey wrench in his business. Vincent said, well, let’s see, there was the dealer . . . Two dealers, LaDonna said, and Benny and the other creepy guy, Ching. Actually he wasn’t as creepy as the guy from Colombia. He was kind a nice. But he still scared her . . . Vincent said, Ching? LaDonna said, don’t tell me you haven’t met Chingo, the Wheel? Where’ve you been? And the Moose was there, of course. Thank goodness for the Moose. He’s fun to talk to ’cause he’s so cool but has a really good sense of humor too, like he says things without smiling or anything? But you know he’s being funny. He’s nice. Jackie doesn’t laugh at him ’cause he’s jealous. But, boy, he wouldn’t go anywhere without him. Moose says he didn’t think it was anybody in our crowd had anything to do with it, Iris getting killed. Vincent listened. Unless it was Ricky, another one of the greasy creeps; ’cause Ricky wanted to go up there, Moose says, but Ching made him stay outside. Moose says Ricky was the only one he knew crazy enough or would do it for fun, to see her fall. Moose doesn’t like Ricky at all ’cause Ricky refers to him, like he’s talking to J
ackie, as Jackie’s pet nigger. Vincent listened. LaDonna said, if I didn’t have him to talk to . . . boy, I don’t know. I mean Moose. She said, hey, who’s ready?
Vincent made the drinks. LaDonna rested her Bloody Mary on her chest and stared at it, her head low against the front of the couch. He asked her if she had talked to Iris much. She said Iris was the kind only talked to men. She had known girls in the pageant that way. Most of them were real friendly and sincere, but there was a few snooty ones in every pageant she had ever been in. She said it felt really weird to be back in Atlantic City. God, time went so fast. It seemed like only about a year ago.
“I was voted Miss Congeniality.”
“I can see why,” Vincent said.
“You better be congenial, try and get along with somebody like Jackie. He’s so . . . God, he’s so full of himself. I can’t stand the way he talks, his language. Can you?”
“Why do you stay with him?”
“We’re out, he talks all the time. We get home, he doesn’t say a word unless he’s swearing at me. Frances says if she was me she wouldn’t put up with it. I’ve talked to her—well, I’ve known her ever since Vegas. She’s really smart, you know, to get where she is. Up there in the Eye in the Sky. You know what? I think she likes him and she’s trying to get us to break up. She says to me, why the hell do you put up with him?”
“Why do you?”
“Well . . . Frances says he’s really good at how he knows how to run a casino and all. You know, and he’s funny. He can be real funny when he wants to. He used to be, when we were in Vegas he always swore a lot, use terrible language but, God, he was funny. He always had people laughing, so he must a been. Now . . . I think he’s scared but he won’t admit it.”
“Scared of what?”
“Those guys—what do you think? See, then I get scared. You know what I’m scared the most of? We’re having dinner at Angeloni’s or one of those places and somebody comes in with a machine gun to kill one of those guys like you see in the paper? You see ’em lying on the floor with blood all over? And Jackie and I get killed because we happen to be having dinner with him. I think about it, I get petrified.” Vincent said he didn’t blame her. “I don’t even like Italian food anymore. You just, like all you have to say is mention fettuccini with clam sauce I start to feel sick. I never even heard of fettuccini with clam sauce before. I never had clams. I mean in Tulsa. Boy, I don’t know . . . I went to Wilson. I never heard of fettuccini, you probably never heard of Wilson, huh? There was a girl when I was going there, she was my very best friend in the world name Melanie Puryear? She had a really sensational way she wrote her name. So I copied it, LaDonna Holly Padgett, till my arm almost fell off. LaDonna Holly Padgett, I’d fill up sheets of paper with it. She wrote in my yearbook . . . No, my God, it was Marilyn Grove wrote in my yearbook . . . Yeah, it was Marilyn. She wrote, ‘Twinkle, twinkle Wilson’s star, LaDonna Padgett is going far.’ See, ’cause I’d already been Miss Tulsa Raceway, you know, to present trophies. I remember one time, oh God, I thought I was gonna have to kiss this old guy had won a race? But he just shook my hand, I couldn’t believe it. Then, I’ll never forget, Corky Crawford grabbed me and gave me this terrific kiss square on the lips, everybody screaming and yelling . . .”
Vincent could hear the rain coming down.
She said, “Yeah, I was voted Miss Congeniality.” Her eyes raised and she said, “I work my fucking butt off trying to be congenial. Look at me.”
15
* * *
VINCENT FOUND THE HOUSE on Caspian where Linda was staying with the band: another wooden relic somebody had painted yellow about twenty years ago and since then said the hell with it, wait for the casinos. He was beginning to get the feel of Atlantic City and its surrounding geography and was getting to like it. At least it amazed him, held his attention, to see an old seaside resort being done over in Las Vegas plastic, given that speedline look gamblers were supposed to love. Here you are in wonderland, it told the working people getting off the tour buses, all those serious faces coming to have a good time. That was something else that didn’t make sense, nobody smiled.
He walked in the front door of Linda’s house and knew somebody was having fun; the smell of reefer almost knocked him over. The La Tunas were sitting around the living room in a cloud of smoke, laid out, accepting his bearded look, at least not worried. He waited in the hall. When Linda came downstairs he said, “I thought for a minute your house was on fire. Those guys blow weed they don’t fool.” Outside he said, “How can you live here?”
She said, “Where’m I gonna go? I’m paid up for the month and they don’t give refunds.”
He said, “You could stay with me, at the Holmhurst.” Not sure if he was kidding or serious.
Linda said, “I’d really be moving up, wouldn’t I?”
He opened the car door for her. “I forgot, I was gonna bring it in. Look what’s in back.”
Her black winter coat, lying on the seat.
Standing in the rain she reached up and took his face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. He held onto her to make it last a little longer than a thank-you kiss. She said, “Vincent, I’m going to have to start giving you some serious thought.” She sounded as though she meant it.
They drove over to the funeral home on Oriental where Vincent told the younger Mr. Bertoia they had come for the ashes of Iris Ruiz. The younger Mr. Bertoia left them and returned with a stainless steel urn the size of a half-gallon milk container. Vincent looked at it. He said, “Something you might consider, put the ashes in Taino Indian pottery.”
The younger Mr. Bertoia said, “Actually, what you’re getting are about eight pounds of bone fragments, not ashes. A body is cremated there aren’t any ashes, as such, just bones.”
Vincent said, “Thank you,” took the urn in one hand, Linda’s arm in the other. As they reached the front door she tried to pull free, but he held onto her, got her outside and in the car.
“Why do you let him bother you, guy like that?”
She said, “You thanked him.” Sounding amazed.
“What’d you want me to do?”
“Tell him off. Jesus, tell him something.”
“I couldn’t think of anything good.”
She was silent as they pulled away from the funeral home and turned corners toward Pacific Avenue. Vincent still couldn’t think of anything. Finally Linda said, “How about, ‘Why don’t you shove a hose up your ass, Mr. Bertoia, drain out the embalming fluid and maybe you’ll act like a living person. With feelings.’ “
“You want to go back?”
“You don’t like it.”
“I think it needs work.”
“But that’s the idea. See, it would be better if you could mention the embalming fluid first and end it with ‘So why don’t you shove a hose up your ass,’ like a punch line. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“ ‘You know what your trouble is, Mr. Bertoia?’ . . . ‘Mr. Bertoia, the trouble with you is, you have the sensitivity of a . . . ‘ That might work. Tell him what an insensitive nerd he is.”
“You feel better?”
“Not a lot.”
“Tell me what I’m gonna do with Iris. Take her back to Puerto Rico?”
“You think she cares?”
“She’d probably rather stay here.”
“Even in her present condition,” Linda said. “I’ve got her clothes, a few pieces of costume jewelry, a hand-carved parrot that’s kind of nice . . .”
Linda was going to call on hotel entertainment directors and see if she could get an audition, beginning with the Golden Nugget. Vincent dropped her off. Then gave the doorman a quarter and asked him if he’d keep an eye on the car while he ran in and made a quick phone call. The doorman stared at Vincent, holding the quarter in the palm of his white glove.
He heard Dixie Davies say, “You sure you want to do this?”
Vincent said, “Let’s see what happens.” He s
at in a phone booth off the lobby.
“Ricky’s out in the rain he must be making collections today, getting their cut from the horse books and the numbers. Maybe shylock payments too, I don’t know. He went in the Satellite Cafe on the Boardwalk about two minutes ago. Alone.”
Vincent said, “I appreciate it, Dix.” And said, “Wait. How about a guy named Ching? The Wheel?”
“Frank Cingoro,” Dixie said, “the Ching. He’s been here, he’s one of the few older guys still around. He used to kill people. Now they say he’s like an honorary consig, a counsellor, reactivated while Sal’s doing his two years.”
“He was at the apartment,” Vincent said, “the night Ricky was on the door.”
“Who told you?”
“Jackie Garbo was there too. From Spade’s. You know him?”
“The name,” Dixie said. “We’ll bring him in, get better acquainted.”
“Why don’t you sit on it for the time being?” Vincent said. “It could turn into an illegal gambling conspiracy and fuck up the main issue. Then where’s your homicide investigation?”
“Same place it is now,” Dixie said, “nowhere.”
“Satellite Cafe on the Boardwalk.”
“Near St. James Place.”
Vincent stood at the counter drying his face and hands with paper napkins. He could see the Boardwalk through steamy glass, that wide expanse of herringboned planking, empty in the afternoon rain. He turned, wiping a napkin over his beard, nodded to an old man, the only customer at this hour, watching him from a booth. The old man looked down through his glasses at the newspaper he held folded lengthwise. The cafe was narrow, done in yellow Formica and dark wood. Two waitresses sat at the end of the counter head to head, intent in their conversation. Vincent waited. The one facing him looked up. She rose, smoothing her yellow uniform and apron. Vincent took a stool as she came down the counter with a menu.
“Just coffee. Black.” He waited for her to place it in front of him and said, “I don’t see the boss.” The waitress stood without moving.
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