Long Island Iced Tina

by Maria DiRico

  CHAPTER 12

  “You’re a museum security guard?” Mia repeated, stunned.

  She immediately regretted blurting this out, but O’Dwyer didn’t seemed fazed. “Yeah, believe it or not. The museum figured, who better to keep people out of a museum than someone who broke into one?”

  “I can see that,” Mia said. “I’m happy to come meet you in Manhattan.”

  “I live in Queens. I hear you do too, so why don’t we meet there?”

  “Sure. Do you know the Aquarius Diner on Ditmars?”

  “I’ve been known to take advantage of their early bird dinner specials on my days off. You wanna say seven?”

  “Perfect. I’ll see you in about an hour.”

  O’Dwyer signed off. Mia placed the phone on the desk. “I’m breaking bread with the one guy who went to jail for the Miller heist. Score.”

  “You’re meeting at the Karras diner?”

  Mia nodded. “I know it and all the people who work there, which gives it a safety factor, like you said before. Plus, I can get some intel from Ron. I want to know how Nicole’s doing, of course, but he can also tell me what airline Tina flew for.”

  Ravello gave Mia a ride to the diner, then drove off to Manhattan for a date with Lin. It was six-thirty, a half hour before O’Dwyer was scheduled to show up. This would give Mia the time she needed to ferret some valuable information out of Tina’s widower.

  Mia walked into the Aquarius, which ticked off all the archetypal boxes of diner décor. A counter with fake wood paneling on its underside and a light-blue Formica countertop stretched the length of half the room. The counter seats were upholstered in dark blue Naugahyde, as were booths arranged in a sideways u-shape around the room. Four-top and six-top tables filled the center of the restaurant. While the entry and path that ran alongside the counter sported a flooring of tile made to look like fieldstone, the rest of the dining area was covered with carpet featuring an ornate design of seashells and mermaids, in keeping with the Aquarius theme. The air was perfumed with a blend of scents from lemons to oregano.

  Ron Karras was behind the counter, dishing out a bowl of rice pudding for a patron. Mia caught his eye and waved. He delivered the pudding, excused himself, and came out from behind the counter. Knowing he was perceived as the bad guy in the breakup of his marriage, Ron responded to Mia with a tentative warmth. She responded with a big hug, and he relaxed. “How’s Nicole?” she asked. “I’m trying not to bother her.”

  “Doing well,” he said. “Still on bedrest, but everything is good with the baby.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that.” Mia placed a hand on the diner owner’s arm. “How are you doing, Ron? You’ve been through a lot lately. Nicole . . . Tina’s death.”

  Ron waved to a waitress. “Alexa, watch the door for me,” he called to her, then said to Mia in a low voice, “let’s talk.”

  Mia followed him to a tiny office overwhelmed with stacks of paper and old menus. She squeezed in after Ron. He reached behind her and pulled the door shut. “What a nightmare, what a nightmare.” Ron repeated this a few times. There was no way he could pace in the tiny room, so he kept turning back and forth. “The police are all over Linda. I lived with that woman for over twenty-five years. Was she upset we broke up? Yeah? Would she kill my wife over it? No freaking way. I don’t kid myself. I’m not a guy who’d drive someone to murder, unless it was one of them wanting to kill me for snoring.” Ron ran a hand over top of his head. “The police also interviewed me as a suspect, Mia. Twice. They brought me in again today.”

  This news set off an alarm for Mia. “Ron, I have a question. The guy who runs Versailles where you and Tina threw Nicole a shower—”

  “You mean Castor Garvalos?” A dark expression colored Ron’s face. “Tina’s ex?”

  “Yes.” Mia said, feeling vindicated. “I knew there was a connection.”

  “Yeah, Tina told me they went out years ago and stayed friends after. God knows why. What a piece of pond scum. You know what he did? He cut Tina a good deal for the party. Then after she dies, he sends me a new bill for twice as much. Condolences and profuse apologies, he writes, but her tragic death voids the original agreement. You know what, calling him pond scum is an insult to pond scum.”

  Mia chose her words carefully. “Is there any chance Tina and Garvalos . . . secretly rekindled their relationship?”

  Ron gave his head a vigorous shake. “He wound up having zero interest in her. Or any women, according to Tina.” Ron repeated his nervous habit of running a hand over his head. He checked his palm, then showed it to Mia. She could see a few light-brown hairs. “I’m gonna be bald by the time this is all over.”

  Mia watched Ron resumed his makeshift pacing. She recalled an image of stunning, vibrant, apparently wealthy Tina. “Do you mind if I’m blunt?”

  “Did I mention I was interviewed by the police? I don’t think there’s anything you can say that would shock or hurt me at this point.”

  “What did Tina see in you?”

  Ron froze. Then he gave a wry laugh. “You weren’t kidding. That’s blunt. But it’s a good question.” The diner owner looked past the office wall, out toward his restaurant. “I was comfort to her. Tina’s parents ran a little restaurant in Athens. It was a struggle. They sent her here to live with relatives here in the States when she was ten. For a better life. She felt obligated to show them they were right, which made her ambitious. She sent money back to them up until the day they died. But she never stopped being homesick. Being ripped away from everything that meant something to you as a kid—that’s rough. She’d been living farther out in Queens, to be closer to the airport when she flew.”

  “I was going to ask you, what airline did she fly for?”

  “Odyssey. Second biggest Greek airline for years until it got eaten by the biggest airline. Everything was about Greece to her. When she retired, she moved to Astoria because it has such a large Greek population. She’d come into my place pretty much every day. We’d hang out. Things with me and Linda were, I don’t know, flat. Like we were friends more than a couple. She knew my stories, my cooking. Tina didn’t. We got married in Greece. Had a tiny reception at the restaurant her parents used to own. They both passed away when she was in her teens, long before we ever met. Tina’s heart lay in that country. We’d go back a couple of times a year. The plan was to buy a second home there. And maybe eventually make it our first home.”

  Mia cleared her throat, choking down the urge to cry. Ron wasn’t some sad sack lured into the arms of a conniving, beautiful woman. He was a grieving widower, a man who had genuinely been in love. And Tina was no longer a cartoon villainess. She was a lonely woman, desperate for love and approval. She’d made terrible choices along the way; Mia was convinced of that, even without knowing the exact nature of what they were yet. But she now saw Tina Karras as a vulnerable if flawed human being. “That painting. The one that showed up at the shower like it was a gift from Tina. Do you know anything about that? Did Tina ever mention the Miller Collection to you? Did she tell you anything about the painting after she got home from the shower?”

  “Very little. All she said was that someone played a very nasty joke on her and she didn’t want to talk about it. But she did change in the short time she was still alive after that. She was nervous and tense all the time. And secretive. She’d make these phone calls where she’d talk in a whisper and then hang up as soon as I came in the room.”

  Mia was intrigued by these mysterious phone calls. She was about to press Ron to see if he remembered anything specific about them when someone knocked on the door. Ron opened it a crack to reveal Alexa. “Everything okay out there?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Alexa poked her head into the office. “Mia, there’s a guy here looking for you.”

  “Thanks, Alexa,” Mia said. “Could you seat him at the most private table you have and tell him I’ll be right there?”

  “You got it.”

  Alexa gave her a thumbs-up a
nd departed. “I’m meeting Liam O’Dwyer, the only person who did time for the Miller Collection robbery,” Mia explained to Ron. “I’m hoping he knows something that can help connect it to what’s happening now.” She kept her comment vague, not wanting to bring up Tina’s murder and cause Ron additional pain.

  “Do whatever you can, as long you stay safe. Your grandma told me the FBI was so impressed by how you fought off the killers who kidnapped you in the spring that they gave you a medal and begged you to run the agency.”

  If Mia had been drinking anything, she would have done a spit take. She slapped her forehead and groaned. “Marone mia! That story’s more fictional than one of Steve Stianapolis’s dumb books. No, none of that is true. I’m not—who’s the famous FBI guy?”

  “Elliott Ness.”

  “Right. I’m not him. But I am almost family to all of you, and I’ll do whatever I can to try and figure out what happened.”

  Ron put his hands on Mia’s shoulders. “Thank you,” he said, his voice husky.

  The two returned to the dining area. Mia saw Alexa showing a man to a table in the farthest corner of the restaurant. O’Dwyer was not much more than Mia’s five-feet-five-inch height, if he even reached that. He was bald, but had bushy red eyebrows. His face was also red, florid from rosacea, a map of broken capillaries stretching from one cheek to the other. His bulbous nose leaned to the left, which Mia assumed was the result of a fight. But O’Dwyer’s eyes had a cheerful glint to them and his whole presence exuded a sense of affability.

  Mia joined him at the table. “Liam O’Dwyer?”

  “Where?” He faked fear, then gave her a broad smile that exposed a few empty slots where teeth had once been. He extended his hand and give her a hearty shake. “Right in front of you. But don’t let my bookie know. I owe him a few Benjamins.”

  “Wow, you’re like, straight out of the Westies,” Mia said, referencing the notorious Irish gang that ran Hell’s Kitchen on the west side of Manhattan for years. She caught herself. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry? That’s the nicest anyone’s said to me in years. I’m flattered. To be honest, I did run with them some. Well, more ran alongside. They were too tight-knit to welcome me full-on. There were only about twenty of them. They had a big presence for a small group.” O’Dwyer sounded wistful. Mia knew he was privately thinking, those were the days.

  Alexa appeared, armed with a couple of beers and two plates featuring Greek salad and giant slabs of moussaka. “I told her my favorite Greek dish,” O’Dwyer explained to Mia. “And ordered a coupla beers. You want one?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll stick to water, at least for now.”

  “Ah, keep your wits about you. Smart girl.” O’Dwyer closed his eyes and inhaled the fragrance of eggs, beef, and spices. “Bee-you-tee-ful. Alexa, will you do me the honor of being the next Mrs. Liam O’Dwyer?”

  The waitress, seventy if she was a day, flashed her left hand. “Sorry, handsome. Somebody put a ring on it fifty years ago. Plus, if you want cooking like this, you’ll have to propose to our chef, Constantine. But I don’t think you’re his type.”

  She left and O’Dwyer dug into his meal. Mia, nervous about bringing up the crime that put him behind bars, speared a chunk of cucumber, then put it back on her plate. “I really appreciate you meeting with me, Mr. O’Dwyer.”

  “Lee to my friends.”

  “Lee. I know that the subject I want to talk to you about might be a sensitive one—”

  “You want dirt on the Miller heist on account of how that ugly painting showed up and then Tina bought the ranch.”

  Mia stared at him, open-mouthed. “Mr.—Liam. Lee. You make it sound like you knew Tina.”

  “That’s cuz I did. She’s the one who got me into the whole effed up mess.” O’Dwyer shoveled another forkful of moussaka into his mouth.

  Mia’s pulse raced. It was like one of those pictures that was only a bunch of dots until you connected the dots and brought an image into view. O’Dwyer was a dot. Or a line. Or both. “Just so you know,” she cautioned, “Ron, who owns the diner, was married to Tina.”

  “Did he whack her?”

  Mia gasped. “No, no. Don’t even think that.”

  “No worries, I wouldn’t blame him if he did. She was . . . what’s the new way you say bad news? Toxic, that’s it. She was one toxic broad.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “Before all these Millennial types were tootling around town with their rideshare gig jobs, there were gypsy cabs in this city. Remember them?” Mia nodded. “I could never pull together the scratch for a taxi medallion, so I used to drive a gypsy sometimes. We were only supposed to respond to calls and not cruise looking for passengers. Yeah, right. Anyway, I picked up this chick Tina Iles one night. She was working an international flight and running late. She was a stew for this airline called Odyssey. Hasn’t been around for years. Anyway, I got her to JFK so fast that she took my card and used me all the time after that. On one ride, she starts telling me about how her family was rich before World War II and had all this great art, but the Nazis stole it and they ended up broke. She said this Miller Art Collection had a bunch of her family’s paintings but refused to give them back. She asked if I could help her right this wrong and get back the paintings. I’m not gonna lie. It helped that she was hot. It also helped that she offered me five grand and I had gambling debts to pay off. Which reminds me, say hello to your father. I played in a couple of his games before I went away.”

  “I’ll do that.” O’Dwyer was friendly and forthcoming, which calmed Mia’s nerves. Her appetite returned with a vengeance. She inhaled a few big forkfuls of her meal, alternating between salad and moussaka. “Did you believe Tina’s story? From what Ron’s told me, her family was poor. They owned a tiny café in Athens and struggled to keep it going. I doubt they were big art collectors or collected any art at all besides those wall calendars with pretty pictures of the Greek islands.”

  “Did I mention Tina was hot? That’s all the research I needed to do into her story.”

  “Noted.” Mia scraped her plate for errant scraps of moussaka. “Can you tell me about how the heist worked?”

  “I can say what I know. The operation was planned for the night before a new security system was being installed. The one they had sucked.”

  “How did you learn the exact date the system was going to be changed?”

  O’Dwyer shrugged. “Got me. I was pretty much kept out of the loop except for what I was supposed to do. First up was knocking out the guard, which was easy since the guy was about a hundred and always half-crocked. Then I grabbed the paintings I was told to grab, loaded them into my car, and drove them to a location near Sunken Meadow Beach.”

  Mia put an elbow on the table and rested her chin on her fist. She studied O’Dwyer with a thoughtful expression. “I know Tina was hot, like you say. But you’re the only one who ever did time for the job. Doesn’t that make you angry? You knew she was involved. Why didn’t you finger her?”

  O’Dwyer rested his fork on his plate. He lifted the napkin from his lap and dabbed the corners of his mouth. “Cloth napkins. That’s classy. So many places, even pricey ones, use paper now. It’s a crime, you should pardon the expression.” He returned the napkin to his lap. “Like I said, I played in card games run by your father. Boldano games. And Tutera games and Gambrazzo’s and Abruzzo’s. Once news about the heist got out, TV and the papers kept saying the Mob might be behind it. For all I knew, they were right, and Tina was only the front woman for the job. I figured I was safer in jail. I didn’t have nothing better to do anyway. My car died and I couldn’t afford to replace it. I’d already lost the five grand from Tina on cards.” O’Dwyer grew nostalgic. “The heist was all over the news for weeks. I gotta say, it was kinda exciting knowing I was part of something that big. When one news guy said, ‘This was a crack operation,” I got a swell of pride from knowin’ I was part of that.” The ex-con’s dreamy expression turned to a sco
wl. “Then I had to open my big mouth at the bar to a snitch. That’s what landed me in jail. But”—he brightened again—“I got a career out of it.” He showed off the Rockwood Museum of Art logo on his lapel. “A lot more boring, but a lot more stable.”

  Alexa reappeared at their table holding a tray laden with Greek desserts ranging from semolina cake to baklava to Honey Phyllo Rollups, a sweet treat that was an Aquarius diner specialty. “From the boss. With a message that dinner is on the house.” Mia started to protest, but Alexa interrupted her. “He also said that if you squawk about it, I’m allowed to take you down. I took a self-defense class for seniors, so I know how to do it, and I don’t mind showing off.”

  O’Dwyer stared at her in awe. “Your husband is a very lucky man.”

  “He knows it. Or at least he says he does, cuz he also knows I’m stronger than him.”

  Alexa placed the dessert tray on the table. She poured them each a coffee. O’Dwyer took a sip of his. “It’s missing something. Like Ouzo.”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me that.” Alex pulled a small bottle of Ouzo out of a pocket in her apron and poured a shot into O’Dwyer’s coffee. “Mia?”

  “Why not?”

  Mia held out her coffee cup to Alexa, who juiced it up with a slug of Ouzo, and then moved on. O’Dwyer began assembling a sampler plate of desserts. “You want me to make you one?”

  “No thanks, I’m full. I’m going to take mine to go. Is there anything else you remember about the heist?” Mia pressed O’Dwyer. “Anything at all? Even a small detail. You never know what could be important.”

  O’Dwyer stopped what he was doing and shot Mia a canny look. “I’ve been so busy eating and talking that I never asked why you want to know all this. I thought you ran a catering hall. Are you some kinda P.I., too?”

  “No.” Mia lowered her voice. “You know how you wondered if Ron killed Tina? He didn’t, but the police think his ex-wife Linda might have. I grew up with this family. Their daughter Nicole is one of my best friends. She’s about to have a baby. The stress is terrible. I want to help them. I also want to make sure that everyone knows Belle View had nothing to do with what happened, even though the painting and Tina’s body both showed up there.”