Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  I watched him for a while, but he wasn’t going to say anything, and I finally left. The landlady snagged me on my way out the door.

  “I did what you said,” she told me. “I called that lawyer you told me to, and he took care of everything. He said Amy really isn’t coming back. What’s she got, anyway? Cancer?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What a shame. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”

  “There certainly does.”

  At six o’clock I got a call from Hillary. I’d just finished feeding the gerbils and was repairing a leaky air filter from one of the aquariums when she rang.

  “You’ve got to help Amy,” she said when I picked up. There was no preamble. Her voice was cracked and raspy in the way people’s voices get when they’ve smoked too many cigarettes.

  I continued cutting a length of duct tape as I snugged the phone between my chin and shoulder. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “They’re going to arrest her for those murders.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know my mother.”

  “Are you saying your mother is setting her up?”

  “I’m saying my mother is into damage control.”

  “Why would she do something like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I snipped off about three inches’ worth of duct tape and put the scissors down. “I think you do.”

  Hillary started crying. “She’s always singled Amy out. Ever since she was a kid.”

  “That’s really not a particularly persuasive answer.”

  I could hear Hillary’s sobs seeping in through the phone line.

  “If you know anything,” I told her, “you’d better tell the police.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s anything I can do.”

  “Please.”

  I carefully wound the tape around the ripped tubing, making sure to get everything squared away. “If what you’re telling me is true, what your sister needs is a good defense lawyer, not someone like me.” And I hung up.

  The phone rang again. Instead of answering, I went into the back and grabbed one of the beers I’d stored next to the brine shrimp. By the time I walked back to the front, the ringing had stopped.

  I’d told Hillary the truth. There was nothing I could do for Amy. Not now. Besides, I thought there was a good chance the D.A. was right. She might be responsible for Pat Humphrey’s death. She had the motive, the means, and the opportunity. And as for the nurse ... well, that one didn’t add up. But maybe there were things I didn’t know.

  I got a saucer out from the counter and poured a little of my beer into it for Zsa Zsa. As I stood there and watched her lap it up, I decided Amy’s guilt or innocence wasn’t my problem anymore. It was the police’s. Let them deal with it.

  It turned out Hillary’s prediction had been correct. Paul called me two days later to tell me the D.A.’s office was going to bring in an indictment against Amy in the death of Pat Humphrey sometime next week. Which they did. Bail was set at one hundred thousand dollars, and Amy was remanded to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. There was no doubt in my mind that a deal would be worked out between the lawyers. If Amy spent any time in jail, I’d be surprised. Probably some form of house arrest would be what she’d get.

  During the next couple of weeks, I threw myself into the store and tried to forget about Amy, her family, and Pat Humphrey. For some reason, I felt as if my skin had been sandpapered. Everything bothered me. Somewhere during that period of time, I took Paul up on his offer and went to bed with him to try and forget about George. It seemed like a good idea, even though Calli told me it was a mistake. I figured I’d get back in the game. The sex was okay, not bad, not good, but it just made me miss George even more, and I went home and cried.

  Paul was still calling, but I didn’t want to see him. Actually, I wasn’t in the mood to see anyone, preferring to spend my time in the company of Mr. Black Label. I’d taken to drinking way more than I should have. I probably would have kept going except for Manuel. I think I was starting to remind him of his father, though he’d never admit to that.

  He’d come in at three in the morning and found me sitting in the living room in the dark, staring out the window, drinking scotch for the seventh, or maybe it was the eighth, night in a row.

  “You gotta stop doing this shit,” he said. The disgust in his voice was palpable.

  I looked up at him and grunted.

  “ ’Cause if you don’t, I can’t live here no more.” And he left the room.

  Listening to his feet going up the stairs, it occurred to me that when a seventeen-year-old street kid says it’s time to clean up your act, if you’re smart, you realize that you’ve gone as far down the road as you can in that particular direction and that it’s time to turn it around.

  Unless, of course, you’re interested in making detox or AA a stop on your itinerary.

  Which I wasn’t. The last thing I wanted to do was to have to go to those meetings and listen to people yammer on about how they were getting in touch with their inner selves.

  Just that thought was enough to make me get up and pour the rest of my bottle of scotch down the kitchen-sink drain. Then I went upstairs to apologize to Manuel. But he’d fallen asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him. The next day, over breakfast, neither of us mentioned last night’s conversation, but the following afternoon, he brought a big bouquet of flowers to the store.

  “Here,” he said. “These are for you.”

  I ducked my head and fed Zsa Zsa a treat so Manuel wouldn’t see my eyes misting over. I find I’m doing a lot of that lately.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Things seemed to be settling down. I was feeling a bit better. Manuel and I fell into a pleasant routine of eating dinner together, then taking Zsa Zsa out for a nightly stroll in the cool of the evening. I started doing a little gardening around the place, pruning back long neglected bushes and spreading mulch on the flower beds.

  I’d almost gotten Pat Humphrey and the Taylor family out of my mind, and I was making a conscious effort to think less about George. I was using the time in the evenings when I would have been seeing him to begin a short story, the first writing I’d done in years. I’d forgotten how pleasurable writing could be. I’d done seven pages when the head of the Hispanic Alliance called me at the store and everything started all over again.

  “I think I found your woman for you,” he told me.

  “Who?” I asked as I fed the store cat a new brand of tuna.

  “Dorita.”

  “Right.” I could feel myself flush with guilt as I listened to the slurping noises the cat was making. Somehow, in the press of events, I’d managed to forget all about Dorita.

  “Someone who was in here yesterday saw her in Sam-ilito’s buying coffee. That’s down on Seymour Street,” he added. “I hope that helps. By the way, the funeral for that man that you found is arranged for next Monday, if you want to come. It’s taken a while to get everything settled.”

  I told him I’d be there and hung up.

  Tim promised to close up the store, and I took Zsa Zsa and drove over to Samilito’s. The place wasn’t listed in the phone book, but it didn’t take me very long to locate it. After all, we’re not talking long distances and loads of retail outlets in this particular neighborhood. The place was your typical convenience store, selling milk, bread, soda, cigarettes, and beer, with a few half-rotten-looking plantains on the side. At seven, people coming home from work were lined up in front of the cashier, waiting to buy lotto tickets and beer.

  When my turn came, I purchased a pack of cigarettes and showed the cashier the picture of Dorita. He said he hadn’t seen her, but a weary-looking woman standing in back of me with a baby on her hip and another grabbing the hem of her skirt told me she thought she lived a few houses down in the big red house located in the middle of the block. />
  I thanked her and left. The moment I pulled up in front of the place, I realized I’d been here before, that this was the house Bethany’s boyfriend lived in. I was deciding what to make of that when he came out the front door of the building.

  I stuck my head out my car window. “Hey, Andrews,” I yelled. “Wait up.”

  He definitely didn’t look pleased to see me. “Jeez,” he groaned as I hopped out of the car with Zsa Zsa on my heels. “What do you want now?”

  “To ask you something.”

  “Come on.” He held up his hands and did a little shuffle with his feet. “I told you I didn’t know Bethany was fifteen. I never would have started with her if I had. I’m sorry, okay?”

  “This isn’t about her.” And I showed him the picture of Dorita. “I’m looking for this woman.”

  “What did she do? Rob someone?”

  “She didn’t do anything. I have something to tell her.” And I went into my song and dance about the guy I’d found on the side of the road, the one I’d named Raul.

  Andrews scrunched his face up. “Jesus. Do you mean Javier? God, and I thought he’d run off.” He combed his hair with his fingers. “Was he real skinny? Did he have a tattoo on his hand of a comet?”

  “That’s him. You know him?”

  Andrews nodded. “Oh, yeah. God.” He sucked in his breath, then let it out. “Dorita is going to be really, really upset.”

  “Is she his wife?”

  “No. His sister-in-law. Or something like that.” Andrews touched the Saint Christopher medal he was wearing around his neck. “Some relative. Or a neighbor, maybe. I don’t know.” He waved his hand, indicating the house he’d come out of. “I can’t keep track. They come and go all the time. Every time you look, there’s someone new living there. And my Spanish isn’t that good. I mean, I had three years in high school. But these people talk so fast. I can just get every third or fourth word.”

  Zsa Zsa and I followed him back into his house.

  “This way,” he said, pointing to a staircase on the right.

  The landing was filled with bundled-up newspapers. The stairway itself was narrow, just wide enough for one person to go up at a time. The walls had holes in it that had been plastered over with duct tape—a new low in the home decoration department. There were two apartments on the second floor. Andrews knocked on the door of the one on the left. A moment later, a woman stuck her head out.

  “Get Dorita for me,” Andrews said.

  “So now that you need me to do something for you, you’re talking to me,” the woman replied.

  “Just get her, Selma. This is important.”

  She moved her lips into a pout. “First you apologize to me.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Hey,” Andrews said as she slammed the door shut.

  “Who was that?” I asked as I raised my hand to knock.

  “One of Dorita’s friends. Let me,” Andrews said, banging on the door again. Selma opened it and slipped out in the hall.

  She was gorgeous, all dark eyes, long, curly black hair, and curves. When I saw her, I understood why Andrews was doing what he was.

  “Yes? You want something?” She cocked her head and stood there looking up at Andrews, chest thrust out, hands on her hips.

  “I’m sorry. Happy?”

  “Absolutely” Selma’s lips curved into a lazy catlike grin of satisfaction. “I’ll get Dorita.” And she turned and closed the door in our faces again.

  “What was that all about?”

  Andrews shrugged. “Stupid stuff.” He ran his fingers through his hair again, then peeled a spot of paint off one of his fingers.

  “Could you be a little more specific?”

  He laughed self-consciously. “It’s not like it’s a big deal. She and Bethany got into this thing, and I stepped into the middle of it, so she got pissed at me. By now I should know better.”

  “She knows Bethany?”

  “Kinda. Selma used to clean house for Bethany’s parents a while back. Now she works in a shoe store in the mall. She likes it a lot better.”

  “So what were they fighting about?”

  Andrews peeled another spot of paint off his hand and favored me with a rueful grin. “Who knows? The two of them were screaming at each other. I had to drag Bethany away. God, she’s strong.” He shook his head at the memory.

  A moment later, the door opened, and the woman I’d been looking for stepped out. She looked thinner than she did in the photograph. Her face had acquired worry lines about her eyes and mouth. Her hair was shorter, and she’d bleached it blond, but it was the same person.

  “Yes?” she said, looking at Andrews and ignoring me.

  “She has something to tell you,” he said, flattening himself against the wall as if he wanted to disassociate himself from the bad news I was about to bring.

  “Dorita?” I asked. “Is that your name?”

  She nodded her head slowly and took a step back as if she already knew what I was going to say and didn’t want to hear it. I felt bad as I handed her the picture and told her how I’d gotten it. The photograph slid out of her hands and fluttered to the floor.

  “Dios mio,” she cried, her lips trembling. Then she turned and ran into the apartment.

  I picked up the photograph. Andrews looked at me and made a hunching motion with his shoulders. Then we followed her inside. As I stepped into the hallway I could hear Dorita talking to someone in Spanish.

  She looked up from the phone as we walked into the kitchen and said something into the receiver. A moment later, she handed it to me.

  “Here,” she said.

  A woman in a thick Spanish accent said, “You wait for me. I will be there.” Then she hung up.

  “Who was that?” I asked Dorita.

  “My tia.” And she burst into tears and ran out of the room just as Selma came in.

  “I like your little dog,” she said, pointing to Zsa Zsa. “My cousin, who lives in Austin, has one. Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

  Andrews shook his head. “I gotta get out of here,” he said. “I really do.” And he headed toward the door.

  “Hey,” Selma called after him. “You’re not seeing your little friend anymore?”

  Andrews stopped and gestured toward me. “Ask her about that.”

  “You come and visit me. I’ll make you dinner.” Selma watched him leave. “He’ll come,” she confided to me after he’d gone. “He likes my boobs. All the men do.” And she disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, I heard the shower start to run.

  I wondered what it would be like to have that much confidence in yourself as I took a pretzel out of the bag on the table and bit into it.

  Dorita’s aunt came through the door an hour and a half later. Whoever I expected to see, it wasn’t Rose Taylor’s maid. She limped into the kitchen on swollen ankles and sat down heavily on the chair across from me. She looked tired and hot. The dress she was wearing, a simple blue cotton shirtwaist, was stained with sweat marks around the armpits and the collar. Wisps of hair were plastered across her forehead. Her upper lip was beaded with moisture. She leaned across the table and took my hand in hers and pressed it till I could feel the roughness of her skin on mine.

  “It’s true what Dorita says about Javier?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “No one,” she said, her eyes flashing, “deserves to die like that, like a dog on the road. Worse, even. No one. All alone. How am I going to tell my neighbor? If it wasn’t for me, Javier wouldn’t have come up.” She took a deep breath. “But this is why I am going to tell you something, something that I have seen. Something very bad.”

  “If it’s that bad, why don’t you tell the police?” I asked.

  “No.” She shook her head from side to side. “I can’t do that. No policía.”

  “But ...”

  She pressed my hand harder. “You have to promise not to tell them this came
from me.”

  “I’m not sure ...”

  “If you do and they come to talk to me, I will tell them you are lying. You understand?”

  “All right.”

  “You swear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it.”

  “I swear.”

  She studied my face for a minute, then leaned even closer to me and began to talk.

  The next afternoon, on my way to Kingston, I pondered what Rose Taylor’s maid had told me. It had cooled off during the night, and the breeze coming through the window of my car brought with it the smell of new grass and cows. Zsa Zsa kept her head out. As I watched her sniffing the air, I thought about Javier Andante and Dorita and all the people that washed in and out of this country in a big tide.

  I thought about how once upon a time my grandmother had come to this country on a boat from Poland along with so many like her. Now her kind were being replaced by Mexicans and Dominicans and Vietnamese and Chinese and Russian immigrants, even in upstate New York. The complexion of the city was changing, and that was, on the whole, a good thing, even if a lot of people didn’t think so, even if sometimes things didn’t work out so well.

  It took me three hours to locate the men who had been piloting the ferry the day Pat Humphrey had been killed. I tracked one down to his house and the second one to his daughter’s place, where he was baby-sitting his grandson. The second one told me what I needed to know.

  “That’s him,” he said after I showed him the photograph I’d managed to dredge up.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” He uncoiled a garden hose, then went over to the side of the house and turned on the spigot.

  His grandson clapped with glee as his grandfather began filling the little plastic wading pool set by the vegetable garden.

  “How can you be so positive? You get so many people on and off the ferry.”

  “I might not have remembered the face. But I remembered the car.” He paused and lifted his grandson into the pool. The little kid squealed with delight. “You don’t see many MGBs around anymore. Not these days. I can testify to that.”