“Stay put for now,” I reminded him. To which he simply lowered his eyelids in assent.
Out of the limo I bounded over to Corabeth. The other two shrank back, but only a bit, since I was arriving so—so—unexpectedly. So full of energy. Maybe even a homework assignment. “Hey, how ya doin’, Miz Angelino,” quipped Slash, that wit. Mitchell elbowed him and they feinted at each other for no explainable reason.
“Fine, boys, just fine,” I smiled benignly.
Slash ventured: “Lookin’ some kind of fine”—and he added, with a leer that was supposed to make me tingle, I guess, “Eve.” This overstepping led to more horseplay from the merry pranksters.
I flashed them as much of a hundred-watt Mary Poppins manic grin as I dared, so as to lull them but not lose their interest. “Catch y’all in a minute, just gonna have a word with Corabeth here.”
I motioned to Corabeth, who angled herself off the bench with a quizzical look on a great face that was way too unappreciated by herself and everybody else. She fell in beside me and we walked across the grass toward—nothing important. More colonial brick buildings. More Alvin and Marcia, no doubt. Her hands were stuffed boyishly into her pockets and she looked unhappy. Out of earshot of the Hardy Boys, I stopped in my tracks, and set a hand on her big arm.
“Georgia’s dead, Corabeth.”
Her face got even bigger. “Georgia from class? Georgia from the restaurant?”
I nodded. She didn’t ask what happened. Either she knew, or—more likely—in her world she always assumed the worst. “Miracolo’s closed while the police gather evidence.”
Now it was her turn to nod. I guess she lived in a world where evidence got gathered on a fairly regular basis. Finally, she worked up the courage to say, “I really liked working for you.”
“You were really, really good.” I sounded every bit as enthusiastic as I felt. She shot me a look like I was pulling her leg, which was impossible either literally or figuratively, and I laughed a little. “You’ve got great hands and a wonderful manner, Corabeth. I want you to stay on.” I figured we’d review the dress and grooming code later, but for the moment the big girl was shuffling around in a way that looked a lot like the Cha-cha Slide. I took it for joy.
When I asked her about Georgia’s purse, she got a look of intense concentration on her face. “Red thing about yay big with a chain handle and a pearl clasp?”
Even I hadn’t noticed that much about it. Red was just about as far as my powers of observation went. “That’d be the one,” I guessed.
Whereupon Corabeth rounded on the dreadlocks and tongue stud back at the bench. “You shit heads stole Georgia’s purse?” she bellowed. I think there was a chance anyone pumping gas at the Marathon station a mile away heard her. Corabeth whirled to face me. “They been fooling with a fancy date book and an iPod in a purple case for like the last day. Now I know where I seen that date book before—class on Wednesday, Miss Eve.” I watched as she headed like a riled bear toward her fellow CRIBSmates. Over her shoulder, she yelled back to me, “Georgia had it out.”
Slash and Mitchell decided to stand their ground, aided by a glint of something that emerged from the skanky pocket of one of them. My heart started racing. At that moment, the rear door to Junior Bevilacqua’s limo opened wide, right in front of the boys, who got jumpy, trying to get the lay of the land that was rumbling under their sneakered feet.
Out slid Choo Choo. As I closed in on the little group, I was dying at the thought that Corabeth, in her big friendly way, would call out something to him, another Miracolo staffer, and blow the whole plan. “Corabeth, Corabeth!” I hollered. She pulled up short—I swear I felt Earth slow in its rotation—and gave the little scene the once-over. Then she turned to me with a grin only I could see. We were good.
Choo Choo oozed silently over to Mitchell and Slash, who could only glower at him like five-year-olds ready to carry on because some bully kicked over their sand castle. “Who the hell are you, Fatso?” sputtered Slash. I didn’t know whether to laugh or quake in my heels. Could the kid not read the situation? Had he never seen the tollbooth scene from The Godfather? In all of his experience was a horse’s head always attached to the rest of the horse? Were these two purse-snatching graffiti-artist firebugs really that unacquainted with popular culture?
Without answering, Choo Choo flicked open his suit jacket, conveniently revealing a shoulder-holstered gun I knew he had bought at the same costume shop where I got my chains-and-bones earrings. We went to the same party. Slipping a hand inside his jacket, while the boys were still trying to find their swagga, Choo Choo pulled out a roll of Mentos. Mitchell and Slash were just starting to work up a look that said the limo guy was not only fat but downright silly, when Choo Choo’s arm seemed to get in touch with its inner mongoose and he had Slash Kipperman off his twitchy feet in a neck grip.
My turn. I stepped up and tried channeling a little bit of a big-hair Jersey girl. All I needed was the gum. “Boys,” I said broadly, “this is Don Lolo Dinardo.” I waxed positively waxy. “Legitimate businessman. Part-owner of a landfill in the Pine Barrens. Security consultant for local businesses.”
With a dexterity I never knew he had, my cousin Choo Choo let the little turd go and snagged the blade, folded it, and tossed it into the limo before any of us knew what was happening. But Slash didn’t get far, maybe because he was trying to catch his breath, and Choo Choo hauled them both close to him by the bunched-up crew necks of their T-shirts.
Then he delivered as fine a Brando impression as you’re likely to see, complete with the famous Corleone hoarse, nasal underbite. “I sense you are disrespecting me, boys,” he uttered with half-lowered eyelids. They answered in a series of sputters and gags that went completely over the heads of the rest of us.
“Today is the Feast Day of Little Serena, the patron saint of Space Mountain. So I am willing to overlook your disrespect”—this was met with more sputters and gags, which Don Lolo shushed with puckered lips—“your disrespect to me, but you must never disrespect my bellissima cugina [most beautiful cousin] Eve, or”—his eyes slew fractionally to my left—“my goddaughter Corabeth. This”—he affectionately ruffled Corabeth’s Shrek ’do, and his voice got very faraway—“is a special relationship. Do we understand each other?” He looked them over with his most reptilian expression. “It pains me to think what I should have to do if you try to set them, oh, on fire, or paint disrespectful portraits of them on the side of a restaurant where the saltimbocca is particularly good. For these places,” said he, sagely, “are hard to find. Do we understand each other?”
Mitchell and Slash, wide-eyed, nodded dumbly.
I was hoping Don Lolo’s point was sufficiently clear, because at that moment the front door to Cottage Three opened and a brawl spilled out. The cheering squad was so mixed up with the fighters that it was hard to tell what was going—until one of the ones in blue jeans and a darker blue T-shirt turned out to be a child-care worker trying to break it all up.
Before this guy could decide any strangers hanging with the likes of Mitchell Terranova and Slash Kipperman warranted closer attention, Choo Choo swiftly eased himself back into his limo throne and I took a quick opportunity to get in the face of my two least favorite students ever in all my days of teaching.
“Where’s the red purse?”
“Swear to God we don’t have it!”
“Don’t make me tell on you to Don Lolo.” Tell on you?
“No, really, Miz Angelotta—”
“And by the way,” said the other one, his watery eyes skidding over to the inscrutable privacy glass of the limo, “really sorry about that whole spray paint . . . incident.”
“We don’t have it. We found it outside in the back behind the restaurant a couple of days ago when we were casing—”
Slash elbowed him with gritted teeth behind a quavery smile. “While we were hanging around t
rying to get a peek at you.”
And they must think I was born—forget yesterday— just after breakfast. I grunted. “Where’s the purse now?”
Mitchell waved his scrawny arms like he was trying to get airborne. “We ditched it.”
“Word.”
White boys just can’t pull that off.
“After we dumped it out and kept the money.”
“Where?”
Corabeth kicked Slash’s shin. “That’s Georgia’s purse, you jackasses. Did you kill her for it?”
At that the boys grabbed each other. I would have preferred the righteous Ms. Potts to keep that piece of information to herself, but their reaction was totally worth blowing the element of surprise. Suddenly they were two little snotty, burpy, blankie-toting kids who were as scared of l’uomo nero as Landon and I had been. “Killed?” Mitchell choked out.
The brawl was breaking up but threats were still getting lobbed pretty freely. A couple of them started to walk it off— and in our direction. Time’s up. “Listen, Terrarium, and you, too, Kippers”—I was just in the mood to make up really stupid nicknames, knowing I had the full force of Don Lolo Dinardo sprawling with some Cheetos out of view behind me—“I want that red purse, and I want it by”—I pretended to consult my wristwatch, then had a brainstorm—“six o’clock tonight.” They started falling all over themselves, protesting that they couldn’t possibly—and here it got murky because one said they dumped it in a Dumpster behind Kroger’s and the other said they shoved it down a storm sewer.
Corabeth rolled her eyes. “Guaranteed it’s under the bed of one of them.”
* * *
“Are we good, cara?” asked Don Lolo when I got out back at my place. He was leaning against the driver’s door, brushing Cheetos off his sinister black shirt. Little billows of mist were lifting from the acreage behind my sweet little house on wheels.
“We’re good, Chooch.” We gave each other a rib-crushing hug, then he chuckled and climbed behind the wheel. I shut the door as the window noiselessly slid down. I asked him if he’d seen Landon, but he shook his head no. Patting the flawless black paint job on the limo’s door frame, I said, “Tell Junior I said hey.”
Choo Choo, the world’s worst matchmaker, piped up. “You know he loves you,” he reminded me, his voice full of reproof. It seemed to slip my cousin’s mind that Junior Bevilacqua had sired five children in five different states and had every intention of paying child support—word, as Slash the K would say—but he just had “all these friggin’ expenses.” Like getting the limo fleet detailed with disturbing frequency and like child support was something different from expenses.
“I don’t need his love,” I said with a laugh. “Just his car.”
“I might not want to tell him that.”
“You might not.”
* * *
I swung by Miracolo, sighing at the sight of the yellow crime-scene tape, not to mention a small crowd that included someone I recognized as a reporter for the Philly Inquirer. For one split second it made me crave a real Don Lolo who could, oh, discourage with an airy wave of a bejeweled hand (holding an automatic) any unwanted attention from the press. Just how long could I avoid the reporters?
And pressing her nose against the glass of the front door, there was complicated little Akahana, who pondered consciousness as she dug daily through Quaker Hills trash cans for treasures both edible and otherwise. And when I realized that standing next to her was the unsinkable Dana Cahill, I gunned the Volvo and practically did a wheelie turning onto Callowhill Street. The presence of Dana was bad news since I didn’t put it past her to hand the reporter a line of the most fictitious stuff about the death of Georgia Payne.
More at loose ends than I’d felt since four years ago when my leg cast came off and I was clearly going to have to come up with a plausible Plan B, what with a dance career that was nowhere in sight, I drove south out of town. At Innerlight Estates, the swank condo complex where my beloved cousin Landon lived, made possible by the dough inherited from his dad, my uncle Dominic, I parked right in front of his unit, got out of the car, and looked around. Towering locusts, ornamental pear and cherry trees, urns of blooms so unusual I couldn’t even name them—even the grass knew better than to go rogue and sprout weedy aberrations. Rain still glistened on all of it, and the sun wasn’t strong enough to dry it up.
My eyes glanced up at what I knew was Landon’s window on the second floor. It was open but, behind the screen, dark even in the daylight. It was the window to the master bedroom. I performed my foolproof—and Landon proof—test. “Vaughn!” I called up to the window. If his handsome tabby self didn’t appear at the window, Landon was home and providing enough wet food and games of fetch that Vaughn could ignore me. But if he popped into view and meowed, he was perishing of want of some sort because the human was off being irresponsible somewhere, working his job, say, and mine was a voice he recognized as someone being adept with a can opener.
“Vaughn!” I called again. Then I waited. When no Vaughn appeared in the window, I knew Landon was home. Home, and out of touch. And probably within earshot of my hollering for Vaughn. For a couple of minutes, all I could do was sigh and stare. What was going on with him? Then I pulled out my phone and called him. It went straight to voice mail.
It was one thing if Landon Angelotta needed a break from the world.
It was another thing altogether if he needed a break from me.
* * *
In the Miracolo world of June 21, Choo Choo Bacigalupo was a goodfella, Landon Angelotta was MIA, Joe Beck was calling me “honey,” Maria Pia was heading for a retreat center, and I was threatening my students in more eye makeup than I’d worn since leaving the Broadway cast of Mary Poppins. None of these sudden changes in my known world compared to what greeted me when I walked into Jolly’s Pub across the street from Miracolo just shy of 3 p.m.
Behind the bar was Giancarlo Crespi, our devoted elderly bartender.
I had to do a double take. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him out of the Miracolo “uniform” of white shirt and black pants, over which he chose to wear a red-and-black embroidered vest. But standing there behind Reginald Jolly’s bar he was wearing a black shirt, silver tie, and gray pants. And in the space of half a day he had gotten an earlobe pierced. Maybe Maria Pia’s B tattoo had inspired him to think outside the pine box.
All thoughts of Mrs. Crawford fled my mind as I stalked right up to the bar. “Giancarlo,” I said, riveting him with my best incredulous look, “what in the name of Vieux Pontarlier”—his favorite absinthe, that herb and anise liqueur with the 130 proof—“are you doing here?”
Our dear old Giancarlo, who may or may not have seduced Maria Pia a century ago, pulled himself up tall at five foot six. “I am supplementing my Social Security.”
I blustered, “But you supplement your Social Security with us!”
A steady hand smoothed his thin comb-over. “That may be as it is”—he inclined his Genovese head at me a fraction—“but we are closed, and my expenses . . .” Here he made the vague Italian one-handed gesture that has something to do with both the incomprehensibility of man’s place in the scheme of things, and indigestion.
“Are what?” At the sound of my bark, I reminded myself of Paulette.
He got prissy. “Are not inconsiderable.”
I was quietly shocked at myself that I never wondered about Giancarlo’s life outside Miracolo. He always just showed up for work on time, did a fine job, didn’t aggravate me—in fact, I decided to make him Employee of the Month. Just as soon as we start up the program. Did this old man’s life really consist of something more than renting a third-floor room somewhere in Quaker Hills, taking the bus, watching PBS on his forty-two-inch flat-screen TV, and eating leftovers from the Miracolo kitchen? Shame on me.
“Well,” I said kind of anxiously, “you’ll be coming ba
ck when we reopen in a day or two, right?” He actually seemed to be thinking it over. Like a resounding “Yes” wasn’t automatic. My voice got higher. “Right, Giancarlo?”
Finally, he answered, “If she wants me.”
She? Could only be Maria Pia. “Of course she wants you!” Then I realized how that sounded. “Back!” Then I realized it wasn’t entirely an improvement. “To tend bar!”
Giancarlo straightened his two thins arms and leaned against the bar. “The human heart,” he shook his head sadly, “can only take just so much, then . . .” And mild little Giancarlo Crespi made a quick strangling gesture with both his hands and a sound like something juicy was getting way too squeezed. Either he was telling me in so many words what he’d like to do to my nonna’s throat, or he was demonstrating what happens to the human heart pushed beyond its limits. On the record, I was hoping for the latter.
“Giancarlo,” I said, wide-eyed, “we need you.”
“Reginaldo pays me better.”
Poker face, poker face, Angelotta. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
He looked me straight in the eye—at that moment I discovered Giancarlo had his very own poker face—the man was full of surprises— and then said, “What can I get you?”
Glumly, I ordered a seltzer with a lime twist. While he spritzed the seltzer into a glass, I bent to get a closer look. “Are you wearing a fake in that ear?”
He glanced up. “It’s a sticker,” he explained, adding, “I didn’t want to commit.”
With great dignity, I told him, “I will take that as a positive sign.” Then I took my drink and shuffled over to one of the café tables in the empty pub.
11
When Mrs. Crawford walked in, it was like a scene from a moody, backlit movie. She stood in the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the indoors, her hand floating up to her wide-brimmed picture hat. As she started across the room to my table, I saw she was back to her hot-pink cocktail dress, matching shoes, and chapeau adorned with a row of well-behaved tea roses. A day off from piano duties at Miracolo seemed to bring the blushing tea roses straight on down to her cheeks. Was she wearing bright blue contact lenses? Apparently murder brings out the experimental in otherwise dependable people . . .
Basil Instinct Page 14
