Dead is the New Black

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  Mario had two darts in his hand and held his arms out as if to say “come at me,” then he saw she wasn’t a threat. “Did I hit the bullseye or miss it? I can’t tell.”

  Laughter and high fives all around. Laura looked to her right and saw a dartboard with a dart buried smack in the middle. It must have missed her by millimeters.

  “That’s a dumb-ass place for a dartboard,” she said.

  And Mario laughed. She didn’t know if he was on drugs, or if he was just so relaxed that anything she said would have added to his good time. She had anticipated a lot of things about him, but she wasn’t ready for him to be so self-assured. Confidence came off him like smoke off a block of dry ice. Carmella was no dummy. An insecure man wouldn’t have tolerated her.

  “It goes there,” he said. “Keeps crazy girls out.”

  “Apparently not,” she said, stepping into the room. She felt more than heard Stu standing behind her.

  “All hot girls are crazy,” Pipsqueak said. “So sit yourself down.” He nudged a chair. It was the aluminum folding kind with that wide plastic weave she’d seen in photographs of porches in the ‘70s. She was disinclined to sit in it, as everyone else was standing.

  “You’re Mario?” She glanced back at Stu, who leaned in the doorway. He was going to just let her do whatever she had to. She didn’t know if he was being respectful, or a journalist, or both.

  “I know you.” Mario pointed at her, pivoting his hand at the wrist, with his other fingers at every ugly angle he could bend them. “That party in the City. Last Saturday night.”

  When an outer-borough type said “the City,” and you heard the capital C at the head of the word, they meant Manhattan.

  “On 36th street? I don’t remember meeting you.” It wasn’t a lie. She and Carmella hadn’t gone to the party together, so no one was under any obligation to do introductions.

  He held out his hand and pulled the chair out less like a cartoon thug and more like a businessperson. “What brings you out to the Island?”

  Laura sat down. “I heard you knew Carmella Ulfanti, and I wanted to track her down outside of work.”

  “Carmella, yeah,” he said, as if they’d met once or twice at a party. He pressed his two darts into the Hipster’s hand. “What are you drinking?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You work with Carmella?” He was being incredibly cordial, considering she had just strolled in and criticized his dartboard placement. Behind her, the game continued as if nothing had changed.

  Mario threw himself into the chair behind the big oak desk and flung his feet onto the top, over a well-worn groove in the edge. He snapped up a short string of blue plastic beads and swung them around his finger. He wore a wedding band. Laura didn’t know much about Carmella’s life, but as far as she knew, the designer wasn’t married or, if she was, she sure acted single.

  “I live on the East Side,” she said, which gave away nothing about her actual pedigree.

  “And you work with Carmella? What do you do?”

  “I’m a patternmaker.” She expected to have to explain, but he nodded as if he knew exactly what that was. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but the cops showed me a video of Carmella going up into the elevator the morning Gracie Pomerantz was killed. And I don’t know if she knows that they know.”

  Mario just stared at her for a beat, flicking the string of blue beads with his fingertip, calculating something, but Laura didn’t know what.

  “Who’s this guy?” He indicated Stu.

  “He’s with me.”

  Mario tilted his chin up to Stu. “Hey, you wanna sit down or you gonna wear out the floors?”

  “I’m good here. Got a cramp in my leg I’m trying to work out.”

  “Man’s got a cramp.” Mario turned to the hipster. “Hey, Jefferson, I hear you got good hands. Give this guy a thigh rub so’s he can cramp his ass on a chair.”

  Apparently, that was wildly amusing, and Laura glanced at Stu. He shrugged. She turned her attention back to Mario. He clicked his beads and stared at her, saying nothing, obviously a graduate of the Sheldon Pomerantz School of Intimidation.

  “So, is Carmella around, or can you relay the message? Because the walls have ears at work, and the cops are all over, and I’m scared like, all the time that the guy who killed Gracie’s going to come back or the cops are going to start taking more people away. I mean, they had me in a dark room looking at video of the lobby from that morning, and I’m like, look, I don’t know. Just leave me alone!”

  Mario didn’t move a muscle except to rub on those goddamn beads. Then, he shrugged. “The cops can call her if they want to talk to her, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “You know, I’m in the rag trade, too. You see this jacket?” He flopped his lapels. “This is my stuff I got in stores all over Brooklyn. I had them copy Armani from a picture, but you know what? This ain’t Armani. An Armani’s two thousand dollars. Do I look like I have two large to spend on a jacket? What am I? An asshole?”

  Laura didn’t answer the question, but looked at the jacket. It was some type of rayon-linen blend. The inside of the jacket flopped open as he sat, and Laura could see the overlock edging. The cuffs twisted, and the stitching around the lapel was crooked because the machine tension was set too tight. It was a wreck. Giorgio Armani might let his maid use it to clean the bathroom floor.

  “It’s a nice jacket,” she said. “I think you and Carmella should work together. She has great taste.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too. Little hoity-toity sometimes, but pretty good.”

  “I know Gracie was trying to back her, but I guess that won’t be a problem any more.”

  “That offer was bullshit.” Mario kicked his feet off the table and pointed his finger at Laura. “That bitch wasn’t parting with a dime for Carmella.”

  “There was no harm in trying. And since Pierre Sevion’s repping her, who knows? Sky’s the limit, right?”

  “So long as you don’t get so high you can’t breathe. Girl like Carmella tends to forget where she’s from.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t have left you behind completely,” Laura said, tensing for impact.

  Mario slapped his hand on the desk, clacking his ring against a pen, sending it flying, “There was no leaving behind. I was the goddamn money. I had her shit set up from here to Viet-fucking-Nam. I got enough money, but not the ‘right’ money. And she tells me not to take it personally. You tell me how that’s not personal.”

  That must have been the fight at the loft party, and he was obviously still pissed about it. Whether or not he was pissed enough to kill Gracie was another thing.

  “Maybe she didn’t want to partner with her boyfriend?” Laura suggested. “Or maybe she wanted someone in the business already?”

  “I’m in the goddamn business.” He flicked the lapel of his Not-Armani. “I told you.”

  “I saw you on that tape,” she said.

  Mario snapped his fingers. “Jefferson.” Hipster looked around from his dart game. “Get her a refund and get her a cab. I got no time for this.” He took the darts from Jefferson and casually threw them at the board. Bang-bang-bang. Right in the middle.

  Laura wanted to say something, but only good-bye and thank you guaranteed not to offend. He ignored her.

  She followed Jefferson out. Stu leaned against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, and as Jefferson passed him, he brushed him to knock him off balance. Stu shrugged it off. Laura knew he’d been the skinniest guy in the room his whole life and had dealt with hallway pissing matches throughout high school.

  The wait for the ferry seemed to take forever. Laura jumped up and down to keep warm. Stu sat on a bench with his arms over the back as if it were seventy degrees.

  “Why would he do it?” Stu asked. “If he believed her money was bullshit he had nothing to fear.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t fear. Maybe he just got mad that he was being out-financed, and maybe she just said the right
thing to piss him off, and he did it.”

  “Come on, Laura. You said he didn’t even go up the elevator.”

  “I only saw part of the tape. He could have gone up before the fight with Carmella. Maybe when Carmella went upstairs Gracie was already dead. Or maybe he went up in a crowd, and the cops can’t see him.”

  “Or maybe he scaled the walls,” Stu said. “Listen, I wasn’t going to mention anything because you’re cute when you’re curious, but we pay taxes for police.”

  “Letting the police find killers? Mainstream, Stu. Mainstream.”

  “You’re very invested in this murder, and I don’t know why.”

  “This part of your story?”

  “Maybe.”

  She didn’t want to tell him that she was a suspect, because that would lead to her telling him that the cops thought she was having an affair with Jeremy, which was exactly what she was trying to do. So she gave the other reason. “I feel good when I’m doing this. I feel really… I can’t explain it.”

  He considered her a second. “Alive? Powerful? Like your life has meaning? Like you’re not just making things for people to buy and throw away?”

  What Laura wanted to say was that people didn’t just throw Jeremy’s things away. But that wasn’t true. Of course, they did. And there was truth in what he said, because this season’s fabulous jacket was next season’s tired old thing. And it was exhausting. And it was why people bought counterfeit goods and cheap China garbage. Because, what choice did they have?

  “Gracie got between them,” she said. “And Carmella sold him out for backing.”

  “Use more words,” Stu said.

  “Carmella knew there was a counterfeiting ring going on, and she suspected Mario, because isn’t he just copying stuff? Who’s to say he wasn’t just putting labels in? So, she went to Gracie and told her, and Gracie promised to back a Carmella Ulfanti line. And then Mario comes down on Carmella at the party for dumping him.”

  “And then he killed Gracie?” Stu flicked a leaf off Laura’s seat before she took it.

  “Yes.”

  He looked at her a long moment. “If this piece is going to break my career, you’re going to have to offer up more than that.”

  Someone in the inner deck caught Laura’s eye, and she craned to see.

  “What?” Stu asked.

  “I thought I saw that Jefferson guy.” She half-stood to get a better view, but it was dark.

  “Paranoia’s not the instrument of an original mind.”

  “It is if someone’s after you.”

  But she didn’t really mean it. She didn’t think anyone was after her, and she didn’t think Jefferson was actually on the ferry. She thought she had enough information on Mario to get the cops off her back. She thought the boat rocked just enough, and Stu was sweet, and the wind on her face was salty and wet and delicious.

  CHAPTER 21.

  Despite enough floodlighting to illuminate Shea Stadium, the ferry terminal was pretty scary at midnight. Unless you were a mugger or a rapist, then it was a warren of opportunities. Laura and Stu feigned blithe, but had eyes on every corner and turn. Laura relaxed when they got outside and onto the street. Once there, nothing could happen to her. Even in the dead streets of the Financial District, she was empowered.

  So when they exited onto South and Whitehall, she let down her guard. This was home base, after all, and required no more diligence than simple navigational tricks. The first thing she did was release Stu to the yellow trains, the N or R, so he could go north to 14th Street and catch the L to Williamsburg. He protested that it wasn’t safe, and she protested back that her femaleness didn’t make the world into a war zone, nor did it change the fact that the island of Manhattan was the safest landmass in the world. In the end, she headed a block over alone to catch the East Side green trains.

  She spaced out a little as she descended into the subway system, tying things together in her mind, committing what Mario had said to memory. Her worst feeling was hurt over Carmella. She considered the designer her friend, a friend who travelled in high-end circles, a polished woman with connections and a smooth way around a party. She knew Carmella lied and exaggerated, but still, she had gone to Duomo expecting Mario to debunk the whole myth that Carmella was his girlfriend. But no, Carmella had a whole separate life. No disowned royal family. No romantic strolls along the beach in Sicily. Was she ever even at LVMH? Did Jeremy know it was all a big fabrication?

  She pushed her card through the train turnstile. Thinking of her first dinner at Carmella’s loft, the one with the Bolognese that Carmella swore she made, it hit her. Not an idea. An object. Something that made her head feel hard and hollow.

  It happened so fast that Laura only had a second to notice the taller man’s dark sideburns and Hugo Boss wool coat with the label still tacked onto the left cuff. The bonk to the head blurred her vision, but she knew it was Jefferson. After the first hit to the head, she started to get mad, but her body wouldn’t move or do what it was told. She thought she flailed her arms. She thought she might have tried to run, barreling into Hugo Boss as a result, but she had no clear recollection of anything but a series of blows, and the realization that they didn’t hurt so much as rattled her head and made her feel generally insecure about the stability of her own body. And she saw stars and was convinced her skull would explode from the pressure.

  “Unless you’re enjoying this you can back off. You got it?” The voice was close to her ear, as hands rifled through her pockets.

  She opened her eyes as much as she dared, and found them looking behind a fog. She tasted blood, like a warm tea compared to the bitter cold outside. She moved her lips to say, “Yes,” but was unsure if anything actually came out. Nor was she sure she didn’t say what was really on her mind, which was, You’re supposed to remove the cuff label.

  “What? I didn’t hear you.”

  She smelled a Quarter Pounder on his breath and realized she was hungry. Then, she screamed. She screamed in one long vowel sound from the bottom of her lungs, in an octave deeper and louder than her singing voice. She screamed to reach Whitehall Street and the token booth. Her scream was a physical thing. A brick. A tidal wave. A wall of sound meant to throw him back ten feet. And it worked. He was blown back a good eighteen inches before he got irritated enough to bring his boot to her head in a swift, brutal motion.

  She heard a grunt and a scuffle a second before she lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER 22.

  At first, she didn’t recognize all the voices. Some were male, some female. Her sister and her Mom were obvious, but the men blurred together. It wasn’t until she opened her eyes and saw a cap of blond hair through the fog did she know Stu was in the room. She smelled him, a mix of bicycle grease and another dry aroma she couldn’t pin down. Wood or smoke, or a little of something burning in the toaster. A comforting smell. A smell she recognized from her last seconds in the alley. He must have come and driven them away with his skinny little ass all in a twist. She knew she smiled because her face hurt.

  “She’s coming around,” a female voice she did not recognize said. “Everyone without a badge, get out.”

  She knew Stu left because he took his smell with him. She opened her eyes and saw Cangemi, with his fuzzy brown hair and freckles, tie loosened, argyle-clad ankle on his knee as if he did this every day. The nurse took her blood pressure, hovering like a crow pecking at a cadaver, tap-tapping it all into a computer while Cangemi just sat there watching Laura regain consciousness.

  Laura ran her tongue over her teeth.

  “They chipped it,” Cangemi said. “It adds character.”

  “Just what I needed,” she replied.

  “Her brain works,” he said to the nurse, who ignored him. He turned back to Laura. “You’ll miss a few days’ work.”

  “I don’t know if I have a job.”

  “Is that why you went to Staten Island?”

  She tried to sit up, but the room went upside down, so s
he put her head back on the pillow. “Carmella’s boyfriend killed Gracie.”

  “Mario Olliveri?”

  “He was trying to do a line with Carmella, but she ditched him for Gracie.”

  The nurse tapped a little more, then left. Apparently, the detective had been waiting for her to leave, because he leaned forward and got serious. “You shouldn’t be poking around. You’re pissing people off.”

  “No, I’m pissing you off. Everything else is just business as usual. In Crazyland.”

  “You never told me how you spilled that coffee.”

  “It was a seven-dollar cup of coffee. If I’d spilled it, believe me I would have remembered it. Okay? And you’re probably going to say that proves I’m sleeping with Jeremy because he buys me such an expensive cup every day. And what I’m saying is that to people that live in that neighborhood, a seven-dollar cup of coffee isn’t a big deal.”

  Cangemi didn’t answer for a second. He stared at the middle distance between himself and a tiny corner of her bedsheet as if remembering some long-forgotten event.

  “Hello?” she said.

  He snapped out of it. “Just back off. We’re cops, remember? This is what we do.”

  She considered for just a second, not mentioning her place on the suspect list. “Stu was here?”

  “Skinny light-haired guy? Yeah. He almost got himself killed for you.”

  “Did you catch them?”

  “We’re after them. They deny being there, and they have an alibi.”

  “Mario.”

  “We’ll get them. Don’t worry.” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t go trying to get them yourself. Speaking of which…” He paused long enough for her to interject.

  “Speaking of which, stop asking questions and go sew something, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You accuse me of murder, and then you tell me I shouldn’t ask around to clear my name. How does that work? Is that even legal?” Anger made her face hurt even more. She wondered what she looked like, if she was a hideous exploded monster or a lady with a little black eye and a chipped tooth.