by Jim Shepard
“Yeah, he’s in mourning,” Bruno said. “He just downed a slab a beef coulda served the Flintstones.”
Mrs. Monteleone opened the door behind them. She handed forward two lined Windbreakers, one canary yellow and the other white. “You’re gonna catcha cold out here,” she said. “I got you coats.”
“Thanks, Lucia,” Bruno said. “We’ll be in in a minute, anyway. We just wanted to get some air.”
“I got you sandwiches, too,” she said. She passed out two packages wrapped in foil. “Eat something.”
They took the sandwiches. She shut the door. “You believe her?” Joanie asked. “So good-hearted.”
“She wraps ’em in foil,” Bruno said.
Joanie put on her jacket and buttoned it up. She helped Bruno with his.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t want you getting a cold,” she said. She smiled at him.
They could hear Sandro in the kitchen right above them: “You kidding me? He charged fi’ dollars an hour to build that fence. You could throw your hat through some of the holes in it.”
Bruno slurped his coffee and looked around for someplace to put his saucer. He unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite.
She knew she was flirting with him. She knew he was responding. She was trying to figure out how to get more information.
He was peering at his sandwich. “There’re like nuts and shit in here,” he said. “What’m I eating?”
She looked at her watch. They didn’t have anything at home for lunch. She turned over her unwrapped sandwich. Maybe she’d bring it back for Todd.
“So who’s the guy you were talking with after church? The guy with the hair?” Bruno asked.
“You jealous?” Joanie asked.
“’M I jealous. Acourse I’m jealous. You know me this long, you don’t know that? I see something I want, I don’t have it: knife in my side. Knife in my side. You know that.”
“I’m flattered,” she said.
“Miss Coy,” he said.
She nibbled her apricot cookie. He was pressing against her from her knee to her shoulder. The rain was letting up a little.
“Great sin, jealousy,” he said. “I run on jealousy.”
“Funny hearing you talk about sin,” she said.
“Why?” he said. “What am I? Jack the Ripper?”
She gave him a polite smile.
“He’s ascared, that’s why,” Sandro said from inside. “That’s why. He knows they’ll come after him.”
“I think about sin,” Bruno said. “What happened to Tommy Junior: that was a sin.”
She closed her eyes. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee, she thought. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Bruno dropped his sandwich half on the step below him. He put his hand on the exposed arch of her foot, which was cold, and warmed it up. “It’s religion I got no use for,” he said. “You know? Religion? It’s like, ‘Repeat after me.’ You know what I say? I say, Why am I repeating after you? Who the fuck are you?”
She was quiet.
“Sin, I believe in,” he said. “The rest of it … You hear people talking about be a good this and good that. You hear ’em talking but you don’t see it. You know? You want to see an example. Mother Teresa? Fine. Where’re the rest? I hear about saints. All I see are Irishmen with red noses passing collection plates.”
Joanie cleared her throat and rubbed her nose.
“Don’t get me going on religion,” he said.
She flexed her toes under his hand. The shoes weren’t good, and the rain was going to ruin them. Watch the blue come off on my feet, she thought. She was beginning to feel more depressed than scared, which was saying something.
A police car pulled up the neighbors’ driveway. The dog in the house started barking.
A young cop with longish sideburns sat in the car and wrote something on a pad for a minute before turning the ignition off. Joanie was too frightened and surprised to say anything.
The rain picked up again. The cop finished what he was doing and got out of the car. He smiled over at them. He was wearing an elasticized clear-plastic covering on his cap for the rain.
The dog was still barking inside the neighbors’ house. She remembered it was the dog from when Todd was out sitting under the tree.
The cop fumbled with the gate in the fence and then came through into the Monteleones’ yard.
“Joey. How are you,” Bruno said.
Joanie looked at him and then back at the cop.
The cop pointed at her. “You Joanie Muhlberg?” he said.
She was conscious that her mouth was open. She nodded.
“Sorry to bother you here,” the cop said. “I been trying to reach you at home. Nobody answers.”
“My son’s home,” Joanie said. “My son’s home now.”
The cop shrugged like he wasn’t going to explain why the world was so nuts. “Nobody answers,” he said.
“So what’s the problem?” she croaked. She cleared her throat.
The dog was still barking next door. The neighbors’ back door opened. An old woman in a bathrobe leaned out into the rain. “What’s the problem, Officer?” she called.
“No problem,” he called back. “Sorry to bother you. Just want to talk to this lady here.” He pointed at Joanie. The old woman leaned farther out to get a better look.
“Sorry to use your driveway,” the cop called. “With all the visitors they got, otherwise I was parking in Stratford Center.”
“That’s all right,” the woman said. She was still trying to get a good look at Joanie. Joanie leaned forward and waved. The woman went back into the house.
“What a dog that woman’s got,” the cop said.
“Tell me about it,” Bruno said.
The cop stood before them just outside of the overhang. Runoff was splashing his foot. “I don’t mean to intrude,” the cop said. “My name’s Officer Distefano. I just wanted to set up a time we could talk.”
“What’re we gonna talk about?” Joanie said. She clenched her fist at how she sounded.
“This last Thursday night you drove home the route Tommy Monteleone was killed, right about the time he was killed,” Officer Distefano said. “We wanted to go over whether you mighta seen anything.”
“I already told Bruno I didn’t see anything,” Joanie said.
“Yeah, well,” Officer Distefano said. “Sometimes you remember things you forgot. Sometimes you noticed something you don’t think nothing of, we think is helpful.”
She looked back at Bruno. He arched his eyebrows in a “get it over with” way.
“Okay, sure,” she said. “You want me to come down to the police station? You want me to come now?”
“You don’t have to do that,” Officer Distefano said. “We’ll come to the house. Tomorrow all right?”
She flashed on her car, and Todd. “Tomorrow’s bad,” she said. She cast around for when Todd might be out. “Tuesday night? Could you do Tuesday night?”
“No, we got that thing Tuesday night,” Bruno said.
Officer Distefano looked at him, puzzled.
“That thing? We got that thing,” Bruno said.
“Oh,” Officer Distefano said. He looked back at her. “Can’t do Tuesday night.”
She tried to remember: when was Todd’s Ad Altare Dei? “Wednesday night,” she said. “Can you do Wednesday night?”
He said he could. They settled on seven-thirty. Todd was supposed to be at his church thing at seven. The cop told Bruno he’d see him later and then left. He had trouble again with the gate but finally got it. The neighbors’ dog kept barking, even after the car had pulled back down the driveway.
They both sat there looking out into the yard. Low spots were beginning to fill with water. “This weather is something,” Bruno said.
“You told him I’d be here?” Joanie s
aid.
Bruno shrugged.
“He’s a friend of yours?” she asked.
He nodded and kept nodding, like he’d gone on to thinking about something else.
She felt that everyone knew everything but her, and she was the one with the secret. “Is something going on that I should know about?” she said. She was interlocking her fingers and squeezing them together.
He shook his head and stood up. He picked up his half-finished sandwich and threw it over the fence into the neighbors’ yard. Chicken salad flew out of it on the way over. “No,” he said, and turned to go back into the house. “There’s absolutely nothing going on that you should know about.”
When Sandro dropped them back at the car, it turned out that hiding the damage from Bruno was no problem: Bruno seemed preoccupied, and the lot had lousy lighting.
All she wanted to do the next morning was get the car into a body shop. She called around to out-of-town places, garages in Orange, in New Haven, in Hamden, and told them what she needed. She didn’t have a ride, so she’d be stuck there. Could they get the parts and fix it today? Most of the places said they’d call her back.
“Why don’t you bury the car in the backyard?” Todd said. “Just take it out back and bury it so no one ever knows.”
He was sweeping in the kitchen. Every so often he cleaned, to let her know how little she was doing.
She ignored him.
“Or we could like roll it off a bridge into a river,” he said.
She held the receiver out to him. “You wanna call the police?” He looked down. “You wanna call the police?”
He set the broom against the wall and left. She thought this was some kind of new low: humiliating her son because he wasn’t brave enough to do the right thing.
She sat around the kitchen thinking she shouldn’t have told them they should call her back; now she’d have to just sit around and wait. She couldn’t go out; she didn’t want Todd taking the return calls. She should’ve told them she’d call them back.
There was a little pile of dog hair and dust in the middle of the linoleum where Todd left it.
“Hello?” Nancy said. She had the back door open. One of her things was coming into the house without knocking. Upstairs, Audrey barked. Joanie heard her jump down from the bed.
“Hey,” she called, getting up. “C’mon in.” She shook her head bitterly at Nancy’s timing, and grabbed the broom and dustpan and swept up Todd’s pile.
“Long time no see,” Nancy said. “How’re you?”
“Okay,” Joanie said. “I didn’t see you at the Monteleones’.”
“You were out on the porch,” Nancy said. “I saw you.”
Joanie emptied the dustpan into the garbage and banged it to shake the dust free.
“I figured you didn’t wanna be disturbed,” Nancy said.
Joanie opened the linen closet and hung the broom and dustpan on hooks. “You want a cup of coffee?” she asked.
Sure, Nancy said. She opened the refrigerator and took out the coffee. Joanie took it out of her hand and pulled the coffee maker closer to where she was standing at the counter. Nancy sat down at the kitchen table.
“I had to get out of there,” Joanie said. “I couldn’t take it.”
Nancy nodded.
Audrey padded into the kitchen, head down. She sniffed Nancy and then left the room.
“Great watchdog, huh?” Nancy said.
“You see Bruno out there?” Joanie said. “On the porch with me?”
Nancy nodded again.
“You shoulda come out and said hello,” Joanie said. She slopped some ground coffee over the lip of the filter. When she wiped it up with a sponge, it liquefied and produced an unexpected brown smear.
“I didn’t wanna intrude,” Nancy said.
Joanie made a scoffing noise with her lips. She closed the machine up and turned it on. “You see the cop?” she asked.
Nancy looked genuinely surprised.
“Cop came and wanted to talk to me about Tommy,” she said. “’Cause I drove home on One-ten that night.”
“How’d they know that?” Nancy asked. “How’d they find you there?”
“Guy’s a friend a Bruno’s,” Joanie said. “You believe that?”
“Who?” Nancy asked.
Joanie put her head down to think of the name. “Distefano,” she said.
“Joey Distefano,” Nancy said. “He’s nuts about this. He’s like Bruno. He’s on a mission.”
Joanie felt a rising in her chest, like something surfacing. “What does he care?” she asked.
“He was a good friend of Tommy’s,” Nancy said.
Joanie put her fingertips and thumb to her forehead.
“You all right?” Nancy said.
“Headache,” Joanie said. “I’ve had it since last night.”
“Jeez. That’s tough,” Nancy said. Joanie opened her eyes and looked at her. She had sounded a little sarcastic. Her expression looked sympathetic.
“You know anything about Bruno and Tommy?” Joanie asked. She turned back to the counter and got out mugs. “You want Danish or something? We got a little Danish in there.”
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“Were they good friends? Did they, like, work together? I didn’t know they were so close.”
“They both worked for that guy outta Bridgeport,” Nancy said. “Joey D, too. He was moonlighting.
“What guy?”
“That guy, you know,” Nancy said. “Ran the scrap-metal place. What’s-his-name.”
Joanie turned to face her. “I don’t know. What’s his name?”
Nancy shrugged.
“What’re you tellin’ me?” Joanie said, exasperated. “They all sold scrap metal?”
Nancy made a “don’t be a wiseass” face.
They heard a car door. Nancy stood and leaned over the table to look out the kitchen window. Her expression changed completely, and she flopped back into her chair. “Your boyfriend’s here,” she said.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Joanie said.
“Ho,” Bruno called from the back door. Audrey barked. “Shut up,” he said.
The dog ran up to him, sniffing and swinging her rear end back and forth. “Get away from me, you sack of shit,” he said mildly, rubbing her head. He pushed past her into the kitchen, his thigh sweeping her aside. He noticed the new washer—dryer she’d just put in and he ran his hand over it.
“Thought I’d stop by on the way to the dealership, see how you’re doin’,” he said. He looked over at Nancy. “Well, isn’t this nice,” he said. “The girls’re havin’ coffee.”
“Hi, Bruno,” Nancy said.
“Joanie? Hello?” Bruno said. He lowered his head to peer up at her.
“Bruno, how are you,” she said.
“I’m not gonna take up your time, here,” he said. “You got things to talk about, girl things. Feminine hygiene. I just wanted to remind you about what you said.”
Joanie looked at him. “What’d I say?”
“You wanted to know why I wasn’t asking you out. And I never did. So now I am.”
Nancy looked down at the floor. Joanie looked away.
“’Less you changed your mind,” Bruno said. “Came to your senses.”
Joanie didn’t answer. Bruno stood there with his hands out, like he was waiting for something he was due. The coffeepot finished bubbling and spitting.
“Bruno, your timing is something,” Joanie said quietly.
“No, it’s all right,” Nancy said.
Joanie brought the coffeepot over and poured Nancy coffee.
“I got a boss waitin’ on me, here,” he said.
“Bruno,” Joanie said.
He put his hands wider apart. “I’m a slave for love. I admit it. I humiliate myself in front of other people—I admit it.”
“You want cream?” Joanie asked. Nancy shook her head.
“You think about it,” Bruno said. “You get back to me.�
��
Joanie put the coffeepot back into the maker. The phone rang. Bruno picked it up and handed it to her without saying hello.
“Hello?” Joanie said.
“This is J and L Gulf,” a voice said. “We can get the parts two a clock, two-thirty this afternoon.”
Joanie cupped a hand around the mouthpiece. Bruno dropped his mouth and raised his eyebrows in a comic way. “Look at Secret Spy over here,” he said.
“So it’s okay?” Joanie asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, you bring it in, we’ll get it done,” the guy said.
“I don’t think I want any coffee,” Bruno said. “I gotta get going, anyway.”
“Nobody offered you any,” Nancy said.
“No kidding,” Bruno said.
“Though you take it away today, you’re gonna take it away wet,” the guy on the other end said. “Long as you know that.”
Joanie pursed her lips, thinking.
“Hello?” the guy said. “You comin’ in or not?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s all right.” She hung up.
“Ask Bruno about that guy,” Nancy said.
“Nancy,” Joanie said.
“What guy?” Bruno asked. He opened the pastry box on the counter near the refrigerator and looked inside.
“Joanie wanted to know about that guy you and Tommy worked for.”
Bruno looked immediately at Joanie.
“I was curious how you knew Tommy, that’s all,” she said.
Bruno shook his head. He lifted something in the pastry box and let it go again.
“Why, is he a mob guy or something?” Joanie asked.
Bruno made a disgusted noise and shook his head again. “Movies,” he said.
“Is that it?” Joanie asked.
He turned to face her and scared her a little. “’Mob guy’? What is this, the cinema? What are you, the G-man? You asking me if this guy is legitimate, one hundred percent? I say: No, he’s not. I say to you: Not many people are.”
“I’m just asking,” Joanie murmured.
“You’re not ‘just askin’. You say to me: What does he do that’s not legitimate? I say to you: None of your business. Here’s a good rule of thumb if you want to do something that’s not legitimate: Keep it quiet.”
The phone rang again. Joanie answered it. It was a garage in New Haven: they’d found the bumper but not the grillwork. She told them it was all taken care of, anyway.
