Bernie comes over to check on her. She says she’s good. She stands up, leaving her club soda, and walks over to the wall and studies a poster for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight from a couple of years back. A cocktail table arcade machine is shoved up against the wall nearby, a scatter of empty bottles on top of it. Next to that, propped on a stool, is a big bouquet of fake roses. She touches the papery petals.
If she walks out the front door right now, there’ll be no choice but to face Vincent. She’ll pull open the door and practically be on top of him, sitting there with the other man on the bench. If he’s looking down at the sidewalk, she guesses, it’s possible she could pass without his noticing her.
“Have a good night, sweetheart,” Bernie says, as she makes a move to leave.
“Thanks,” she says. “You, too.”
As she opens the door, she tilts her head to the left, expecting to make immediate eye contact with Vincent. But she’s surprised to see that both he and the other man are gone from the bench. She takes a few steps out toward the street and turns around in a circle, scanning everywhere for them. She notices them then, ducking onto West Tenth Street, headed toward Highlawn Avenue. Her gut tells her to let this go, but she feels committed. She follows them.
West Tenth between Kings Highway and Highlawn is quiet and residential, mostly row houses with half-blocked driveways, notes left on windshields, garbage cans and recycling bins out at the curb. The street is crowded with parked cars in a battle for position. Newspapers curl in the gutter under the murky glow of streetlamps. The dark seems so much darker here than out on busy Kings Highway.
Amy keeps a safe distance and stays on the opposite side of the street. She pulls her hood up to obscure her face. The other man—now she can see him in full—wears drooping jeans with a hole in the back pocket and Timberland boots. His hood is still up. The fact that she’s seen only the back of him so far makes it difficult to tell if it’s the same guy from earlier.
Vincent seems overanxious. He’s talking to the man, gesticulating wildly, trying to explain something.
The man is talking back. He seems pretty relaxed.
Amy can’t hear anything either of them is saying.
She wishes she could. She wonders where they’re heading. Her mind wanders in a million bad directions: drug deal, shakedown, secret whorehouse, to beat the hell out of some poor working stiff who owes on a debt.
They stop in their tracks. So does Amy, crouching down behind a Nissan Maxima with a birdshit-splattered windshield. Vincent’s getting louder. She hears the word mother. The two of them are facing each other now. Toe to toe. She can sort of see the other man’s profile behind the curved edge of his hood. He has a long nose and a square chin. The guy Vincent was with earlier, she only saw straight on. She didn’t really take note of his features, more what he was wearing. Those basketball shorts and flip-flops. His easy slouch on the bench.
Vincent throws out his arms and pushes the man.
The man folds back, hitting the side of a parked car with a thud. He comes up with a knife in his hand. Amy only sees it at first because of a glint on the knife from the streetlamp over them. It’s a short, stubby blade. She can’t make out much else from her position.
Amy ducks lower, covering her mouth, not wanting to make a noise. If something happens, she doesn’t want the man to know she’s here. She makes a noise, and he’ll come after her. She wonders if other people are witnessing this from their windows. It’s probably just a show of force, of dominance. Alpha male bullshit. Nothing will happen.
But the man lunges at Vincent and stabs him in the throat. Vincent is too slow to get his arms up to block the attack. Amy hears a wet sound, Vincent coughing. He puts his hands over his neck as if he’s trying to hold something in, and then he crumples to the sidewalk behind a car and out of her view. The man, without hesitation, bolts away up the block, charging into the middle of the street, looking back once, and then making a quick right onto Highlawn Avenue. The sound of his boots on the pavement is terrible.
Amy rises to her feet and peers over the hood of the Maxima. She still can’t see Vincent. She crosses the street, twisting her head around to see if anyone else has witnessed this. She should take out her phone and call 911. She doesn’t. It’s as if she’s looking out the window at Bob Tully again. She had thought Vincent looked like Bob Tully, but now she’s realizing that Vincent looks like the unknown man Bob Tully strangled. She’s got to stay quiet.
She walks up to Vincent. He’s on his side, close to the curb, knife still in his neck. Blood spreading out neatly under him. His eyes bulging. His mouth open in the shape of desperate silence. Blood fountaining from his lips, between his fingers. He manages to yank the knife from his throat—the worst move. A thick cord of blood gushes from his neck, his hands finding few things to do now.
Amy stands near him, by the front gate of an unassuming little row house with a cardboard Valentine’s Day heart hanging from the door. She’s fascinated by the blood. Revolted by it. She was just sitting with Vincent at Mrs. Epifanio’s table that very morning. She doesn’t know if he deserves this. She tells herself that he doesn’t. She thinks of St. Maria Goretti, eleven years old, stabbed in the throat by her would-be rapist. She can’t remember where she read that. Some book of saints she got out of the library. St. Maria Goretti forgave her attacker with her dying breath, said she wanted him in heaven with her. Amy guesses that’s why she was a saint.
She squats down and says, “It’s going to be okay, Vincent.”
Vincent notices her then. He chokes out two words: “Call … someone.”
His blood is trickling into the street, into the dark crevice between the curb and the front tire of the parked car. Amy smells the rubber of the tire. She smells Vincent’s distress. He’s looking at her with his sad, dying eyes. She pulls back her hood so he can see her face. Black hair. Pale skin. Caring eyes. She wonders if he thinks she’s a saint.
He doesn’t say anything else, the life going out of him. The place he’s stabbed, there’s no helping him anyway. Amy’s playing a role now, that’s it. She’s realized it’s her duty, to be with this stranger in his agony.
She reaches out and puts her hand on his chest. He’s a harmony of stillness.
Next to him is the knife. She picks it up. A stiletto switchblade, about eight inches open, burnt bone handle, sharp steel blade. Vincent’s blood feathered on it. She stands and folds the blade, locks it, Vincent’s blood marking her palm. She puts the knife in the pocket of her hoodie and walks off in the opposite direction of Vincent’s killer, back toward Kings Highway.
6
When the reality of what’s happened kicks in, Amy begins to shake with fear. She feels like a killer with the knife in her pocket. She’s not sure she should go home. And how can she ever go back to church? She’s sure she’ll see Vincent there on the altar, his hands at his neck, his blood pouring down the marble steps. She’s sure that Katrya’s organ will mimic his choking. She’s sure she’ll smell that rubber and distress when she takes the communion wafer on her tongue. She’s sure she’ll see his blood in the chalice and taste it on her lips. And in the stained glass windows, as she kneels to light a candle, Vincent will appear. Murdered like a saint, after all. And she, in that moment, his last, mistaking herself for a saint.
She’s walking wherever. Hand in her pocket over the knife. Blood on her hand. Spots of blood on the tips of her sneakers, where she must’ve edged against the puddle of blood when she reached out to put her hand on Vincent’s chest or when she picked up the knife.
She’d wandered left on Kings Highway, away from Homestretch, to Seventy-Eighth Street, past Bay Parkway, all the numbered avenues running down. Seventy-Eighth Street looks more or less like the street where Vincent was stabbed, like all the side streets in the neighborhood. Trees. Fire hydrants. Iron front gates. Mary statues in the yard. Garbage cans at the curb. Tight parking. Dull bloom of streetlamps. Cars rattling up the block every so often, their l
ights a disaster of possibilities. As she passes through Bensonhurst, headed for Dyker Heights, row houses give way to larger two- and three-family houses with private driveways. When Amy looks up and realizes she’s about to cross Sixteenth Avenue, she remembers the Roulette Diner.
The Roulette’s on Sixteenth and Eighty-Sixth. It’s an old dive of a diner that Alessandra took her to a handful of times, open twenty-four hours. She makes a left and hustles the eight short blocks.
When she gets there, she walks up the crumbling stoop. A laminated sign on the door reads THE ROULETTE WILL BE CLOSING ON APRIL 15, 2017. THANK YOU PATRONS FOR 44 GREAT YEARS! Amy opens the door. A bell clangs. It very much looks like a place at the end of its run: Naugahyde booths patched with duct tape, mirrored walls dirty and cracked. What once must’ve felt casino-flashy now feels casino-sad. Waiters and waitresses in black vests and button-up shirts look like they’ve been working at a lowstakes blackjack table all night. An old man is huddled at the front register with a Daily News, glasses low on his nose.
Amy settles into a booth overlooking the parking lot, taking her hood off. Half the parking lot is torn up by some purposeless construction. A few other people sit scattered around at tables and booths. It must be late, but not that late. She’s afraid to look at her phone. A couple of giggly girls across from her are taking selfies of themselves with two big plates of disco fries. Amy remembers Alessandra ordering the disco fries.
A waiter comes over, long nails and tired eyes with a crusty green stain on his vest. He hands her a sticky menu and fills her water glass. The glass has a white film of dishwasher residue on it. She thanks him and orders a coffee.
She gets up and walks to the bathroom. It’s nasty in there. Pink foam from the broken soap dispenser has left a trail around the sink. Another broken mirror. Broken tiles on the floor. There are two stalls, each with graffiti on the outside of the door—tags, phone numbers, half-peeled stickers. She washes the blood off her hand before doing anything else.
In one of the stalls, she spreads toilet paper on the seat and sits down to pee. She looks at the tattoos on her thighs. Used to be her favorite pieces. Mexican sugar skulls, bright and cheerful fraternal twins. One good, one evil. Done in Flushing by Joey Assassin. It seems fitting to focus on them now, thinking about the joy and purpose she felt watching Vincent die.
She unspools some toilet paper and wipes the blood from her sneakers. She drops the crumpled paper between her legs into the water. She takes the knife out of her pocket and unfolds it. She pictures it lodged in Vincent’s throat, hears him gurgle around it. She sees the killer’s profile. The blood is there. It’s real. The knife is real. Her legs are falling asleep. She wipes the blood from the knife with a ribbony heap of toilet paper and stands up. She deposits the bloody paper into the toilet and flushes hard, as if it will be rejected if she hits the handle too softly. Red swirls in the water.
She sets the knife on the toilet tank and pulls up her pants. She wants to clean the blood from the knife, but she’s afraid to do it at the sink. What if someone walks in? She dips the blade in the fresh toilet water and pushes it around, like she’s doing dishes in a basin. More red in the water. She turns it over in her hand and holds it by the blade and washes the handle that way. When she’s done, she dries the knife with more toilet paper and then gives the toilet another forceful flush. She closes the knife and puts it back in her pocket.
She’s not going to have a mirror moment. She rinses her hands in the sink and avoids looking at herself in the broken glass, as she did on the way in. She’s not sure what or who she’ll see reflected in the grime.
Back at the table, her coffee’s waiting for her. It’s still steaming. She wraps her hands around the mug and puts her chin over the steam, her elbows up on the table. The coffee smells bad. She looks out the window again. It occurs to her then that she could’ve been followed. Who by? Someone who witnessed her witnessing the crime? Or what if the killer doubled back, wanting to recover the knife, and saw her perched over Vincent? Every dark shape outside is the killer. Every El column provides him cover. Around every corner, he peers with greasy eyes, hood drawn tighter so his face is a beam of meanness.
“Amy?” a voice says.
She looks up. It’s Mr. Castricone from church. He takes the collections at eight fifteen Mass on Sundays. She almost doesn’t recognize him out of his bulky tweed jacket. He’s wearing a windbreaker and gray sweatpants and a battered Mets cap. He’s probably in his late fifties, but he looks even older dressed down, like a guy you’d find sitting on a bench outside the OTB with a short dog of wine. She realizes she hasn’t responded to him.
“You okay?” Mr. Castricone says. “You look troubled.”
“I’m just a little out of it,” Amy says.
“Anything I can do?”
“That’s nice of you. I’m good.”
“How about some company?”
“Really, I’m good.”
Mr. Castricone sits down across from her anyway. “You ordering anything to eat? I had the chicken souvlaki.” He kisses his fingers. “Delicious. ‘My compliments to the chef,’ I says to Carmine. Carmine over there’s my regular waiter. He’s been around forever. Gonna be sad to see this place go. Forty-four years they been open; forty-four years I been coming here. I came here after my confirmation, you believe that? I had my bachelor party here. Me and the boys. ‘Don’t take me to no strip club,’ I says. ‘Take me to the Roulette.’ I came here every Sunday after church with my wife and daughter. After my wife died in ’06, my daughter would still drive in from Jersey to meet me here on Sundays, and Carmine would set a place for my wife. When my daughter had the kids, she stopped coming every Sunday, but I’d still be here and Carmine would set the two other places. Where am I gonna go? Nowhere’s left in the neighborhood for me.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy says.
“I’m intruding,” he says.
“I’m just …”
“You need someone to talk to, I’m here. I got a lot of wisdom to pass on. Been through some shit.” He pauses. “Excuse my language. Been through my wife dying. Been through union battles. Got my ass handed to me by this pyramid scheme out of Bay Ridge. You heard that story? Sucked up my savings. I was one of the guys got taken. I trusted the guy who did it. Took him in like family. I’m talking too much. My wife always said I talked too much. My daughter, too. I remember correctly, you’re from Queens, right?”
“Right.” Amy drinks some coffee. It tastes worse than it smells. Sour and weak. She pours in two packets of sugar and tries to make it palatable. She wonders if it’s just what she’s witnessed that’s making it taste so off. After Bob Tully threatened her with the knife, she remembers, her sense of taste faded. Her grandma took her to the doctor because she was losing so much weight.
She drinks again. The coffee’s awfulness is merely masked by sweetness now.
“Flushing? That’s right, right? See, I still got some of my memory left.”
“Mr. Castricone, I hate to be rude,” Amy says, leaning back in the booth. “I appreciate you looking out for me. You don’t mind, I just need to be alone.”
“I got you,” Mr. Castricone says. “A little heartbreak, perhaps? Fella done you wrong. I see. He’s got rocks in his head, that’s what I say. You’re a beautiful girl.” He stands. “I heard you’ve got tattoos. I have one, too. From when I was in the navy. My wife hated it. We’ve all got secrets.”
Amy ignores this. When Mr. Castricone finally gets up and leaves the diner, she feels some relief. The waiter comes back and asks if she wants to order any food. She says she’s going to just stick with the coffee. The waiter says she should try the rainbow cake if she’s in the mood for cake. It’s just like a rainbow cookie; the best thing on the dessert menu. She says she’s not feeling very well, but she’ll get it next time she’s in. He reminds her there won’t be many more next times. She gives in, and he brings her a piece of the rainbow cake, insisting she won’t regret it.
; She presses the tines of her fork into the cake. It’s mushy, and the frosting seems to be sweating, as if it’s been sitting out in a hot display case for days. She can’t eat it. She won’t.
She thinks about Alessandra to get her mind off Vincent and his killer. One time, sitting in this very booth, Alessandra had told her a story from high school. How she’d come here after a school play senior year and downed a pint of peppermint schnapps in the bathroom with a girl named Marilu Pirraglia, and then they’d eaten two slices of chocolate cheesecake each and puked in the parking lot and laughed all the way home.
The waiter shuffles up to the table. “How’s the cake?”
“Good,” Amy says.
“But you’ve barely touched it.”
“I’m sorry. It’s my stomach.”
He shrugs. “I shouldn’t have pushed it so hard.”
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think someone can call me car service?”
“We can arrange that.” He goes over to the old man at the register and says something to him. The old man picks up a red phone and taps the numbers slowly, talks into the receiver. He holds up his hand to Amy to indicate that they’ll be here in five minutes.
Amy’s only desire is to be home now. She’s walked so much, she doesn’t have it in her to walk the mile and a half back to her block. And she’s not sure what’s out there in the dark. She hates taking a car service. She’d rather take the bus or train a couple of stops, but she knows she’ll wait a while at this time of night, and that means standing out on the corner or up on the El platform, too exposed.
She leaves ten dollars on the table, more than enough for bad coffee, a slice of cake she didn’t even want, and a tip for helping arrange the ride.
A black eighties Town Car pulls up a few minutes later, its lights hazy in the half-destroyed lot. Amy rushes out of the diner. Stenciled on the door of the car in white letters is gravesend & bensonhurst best car service. The driver doesn’t open the door for Amy. She hops in, her hand tight on the knife in her pocket, afraid that she’ll lose it in the seat gap.
The Lonely Witness Page 5
