The Weeping Buddha

by Heather Dune Macadam

“Oh, I berieve in Resterday.”

  The tension between them shattered—first Sam, then Alex and Maddie, even Godwyn began to laugh. Devon found herself carried with the wave, slightly at first and then more fully as the laughter took hold of her body and shook until tears began to fall.

  Josh waved to the fried crab-ball cart and Maddie beckoned to one of the waiters.

  “Beka would have wanted us to have this party in her honor. She would want us to eat a lot and talk about her,” Alex reminded them.

  They had ejected their pent-up rage and gotten at least a few things off their chests, so that by the time the carts of food arrived on their side of the room their appetites had also returned. Soon the table was full of stacked bamboo steamers full of fresh, hot dumplings, shrimp toast, fried milk, and platters of fon dripping with oyster sauce.

  Devon whispered, raising her cup of tea, “To Beka.”

  “To Beka,” they answered in unison. The room suddenly seemed lighter as if her spirit had finally appeared—late as usual—and ordered Tsingtao beers for the lot of them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Zen is the unsymbolism of the world.

  —R.H. BLYTH

  Loch peeked through the kitchen door window and saw Aileen wave them inside. A moment later he was receiving the official spotted welcome as Boo bounded through the back door. Loch knew Boo’s grumbles were Dalmatian for “Where the hell you been?” but Gary, unfamiliar with the language of dogs, ducked behind the wagging tail and into the kitchen where Aileen was filling the tea kettle in the sink. Loch watched from the back porch as his partner chatted her up, taking his time to rub Boo’s ears before coming inside.

  “So how come you like dogs so much?” she was asking his partner when Lochwood finally came through the door.

  “I don’t know that I do.” Gary still looked a bit unnerved by Boo’s reception.

  “He’s just talking at you.” Aileen laughed at him.

  “I’ve never heard a dog talk before.”

  “Your partner’s cute when he’s scared, Brennen.”

  “Hear that, Gary? You’re cute,” Loch teased.

  “Shut up. Only Aileen can call me that.”

  “I hear you been all over town asking questions. You guys going to interview me, too? I’m gonna be really hurt if you don’t give me the good cop, bad cop routine.” She pouted at them.

  “Which one of us you want to be bad?” Gary asked.

  She chortled and pulled three cups out of the cupboard. “What kind of tea you want? I got Lipton’s and Earl Grey.”

  “What’s the difference?” Gary asked.

  “If you have to ask, you get Lipton.”

  “Can I use your phone, Leenie?”

  She looked at Loch. “What is this? You asking cause your partner’s here? Just so you know, he never asks permission for nothin’.” Loch walked over to the phone and began to dial Devon’s cellphone one more time.

  “So I guess you knew Beka, too?” Gary said.

  “Sure, we all go way back. Devon started bringing Beka out here every summer in high school. That’s almost twenty years ago. Oops! Dating myself. I mean ten years ago.” She put the kettle on the stove and turned up the flame.

  “How’re you taking it?”

  “I’m not thinking about it, that’s how I’m taking it. But Beka and me weren’t close like Dev and her. We just knew each other, you know? Hell, she was a fixture around here. At least until they had that stupid fight.”

  Loch hung up the phone, perplexed, and looked at them both.“I thought it was my cell that wasn’t working but I just got the same recording.”

  “Maybe she’s out of range,” Gary suggested.

  “I’ve reached her in the city before,” Loch replied.

  “Didn’t you say she’s staying at Gabe’s warehouse?” Gary asked.“Maybe the walls are distorting the frequency.”

  “I’ve called her there before, too.” Loch proceeded to beep her.

  “That’s right, I keep forgetting! Can you believe this, Aileen? I just found out about these two today.”

  “Should have come to Sag Harbor sooner; we’ve known for years.”

  Loch sat down by the fire. “So, anything else unusual happening in town today?”

  “Well, let’s see, Barry Goldstein and his wife are leaving for St.Barts. There’ve been reporters all over town trying to get dirt on Beka and Gabe. Everyone’s mad at Tom Hurley for the article he ran on Beka, and there are two Homicide detectives asking a lot of questions.I didn’t know you guys went to the Corner Bar for lunch.”

  Gary whistled. “Jeezus, that’s scary!”

  “And you had French onion soup!” She laughed. “You sure you don’t want breath mints instead of tea?”

  “I told you, Aileen should be the cop! What about Edilio?”

  “Now, him nobody knows anything about! But he’s top on the list of possible murder suspects at 7-Eleven.” The teapot began to moan.

  “General consensus at the post office is Beka did it.”

  “You knew Edilio?” Gary asked.

  “Aileen knows everyone.” Loch checked his watch; Devon should have returned his page by now. He didn’t like not being able to get in touch with her.

  “I met him a few times but he wasn’t much interested in getting to know me,” Aileen was saying. “I’m just a small-town girl, unimportant in the Hamptons’ scheme of things.”

  “That couldn’t be true.” Gary was winking at her.

  “When you grow up out here you get used to being passed over by out-of-towners. The only way we get ahead is if we inherit and sell the property to the next golf course developer.”

  “The question for you, Leenie, is did you know she was leaving Gabe?” Lochwood cut in.

  “No shit. I knew Gabe had the place on the market, but I thought it was more to piss Beka off than a real threat.”

  “Interesting.” Loch smiled. She was probably right.

  She brought over a pot of tea and set it down in front of them.“Now, if you’re going to be here for a while I’ll run down to Schiavoni’s before they close and get something for my dinner.”

  “You’re not going to stay and have tea with us?”

  Gary is such a flirt, Lochwood thought.

  “If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll have a cup with you. But Schiavoni’s closes at five and I can never get out of there quickly. If you guys go before I get back, don’t lock the door.”

  “Is that safe?” Gary exclaimed.

  “What? The raccoons are going to break in and steal the garbage?” She chuckled. “Actually, that’s happened to me before. This is the country!” She grabbed her coat and gloves. “Devon ever tell you about the lady who wanted her money back last summer because there were raccoons in Sag Harbor? Said she couldn’t relax this close to wildlife, so she went back to New York City!” Aileen guffawed.

  Loch held out his hand to stop her. “Hey! You know where this attorney Barry Goldstein lives?”

  “Sure, yellow Lab—Pretzel’s house … Take a left on Bay and go down three streets; it’s the biggest house on Rysam Street. Gotta go, it takes me forever to get out of that damn store!” Aileen left them to the fire and Boo’s occasionally tapping tail demanding more belly rubbing. Loch poured the tea.

  “I never thought I’d see you looking so domestic, Brennen,” Gary scoffed.

  “Once in a while it’s okay.”

  “Does Frank know?”

  “Halsey can trust Frank more than I can trust you.” He still wasn’t used to calling her by her first name in front of his partner.

  “I resent that!”

  “You have a big mouth, DeBritzi, and I want you to keep this one to yourself. Devon’s got enough to deal with.”

  “Hey, if she was going to sleep her way to the top, she’d do Houck!” Gary joked.

  “She wouldn’t find that funny.”

  “Sure she would. Halsey would crack that one herself. So what about this Aileen?�
�

  “Rough childhood, her parents owned the local fish store but died in a car accident when she was nine, her guardian was an alcoholic fisherman who couldn’t swim. She’s known Halsey since they were kids …”

  “I don’t want a profile, asshole. I want to know if she’s dating anyone.”

  “Oh.” They drank their tea peering at the fire. “I don’t think so.”

  Loch checked his watch and wondered where Devon and her Chinatown cronies were now. “Here, boy.” He tossed the cookie into the air, watched Boo catch it, and settled back into the rocker to stare at the fire. It was good to be home.

  Whenever she and Lochwood went out for Chinese food they ended up arresting someone, Devon thought, as she pushed the soy sauce around with her chopsticks. Empty plates along with tin and bamboo steamers were stacked in the middle of the table. After the initial rush of trying everything the servers brought them, the group had slowed down and eaten more leisurely, but now everyone was stuffed.

  Josh and Maddie were comparing the quality of the dim sum with her own restaurant’s fare when Maddie announced, “You know what the I Ching said today?” Everyone looked at her expectantly.“Wu Wang. By turning back one is freed of guilt.”

  “I never understood how a bunch of lines could say anything,” Josh countered.

  “Do you still read the tarot cards?” Alex asked Maddie.

  “Not since that day at One Police Plaza,” Maddie answered between bites of barbecued chicken feet and one hundred-year-old preserved egg.

  Devon’s ears pricked up and she turned her attention to their conversation.

  “God, remember that?” Alex tried to balance a stuffed eggplant in black bean sauce on her chopsticks. “What did he accuse you of?”

  “Black magic.”

  “Who?” Katiti asked.

  Sam stopped eating and looked up at Maddie. “Reverend Brown.

  Man, did you piss him off.”

  Maddie began to play with a crab claw, dragging it through the soy until it was soaked and dark brown. She left it there and looked at her former roommate. “Yeah, well, he told me that I was evil.” Her eyes looked across the table as if into the distance. “I believe his exact words were, ‘It’s because of you that Todd’s gone. If you hadn’t touched the devil’s cards, we would have found him by now!’ Detective Freesia came out and told him to leave me alone and he said, ‘She’s a witch!’‘She’s a witness!’ she yelled back at him. ‘Leave her alone.’”

  Maddie looked at her friends; they had stopped eating. “I kept telling myself that he was wrong, that it wasn’t my fault that Todd was missing, but I couldn’t help wondering … I can’t help but wonder …”

  “We all feel responsible—guilty, if you will—on some level,” Josh told her.

  “A lot of hocus-pocus, Maddie.” Sam reached his hand over the remnants of their meal and took hers. “I asked you to do the cards, remember?” She nodded as he took her hand and smiled at her.“Christians can be just as superstitious as pagans if you ask me, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. I never held you or anyone else at this table accountable for Todd’s disappearance, except maybe for Beka.”

  His eyes caught hold of Devon’s. “If she hadn’t given him that coke maybe he wouldn’t have gone off like that.”

  There it was again, drugs.

  “Are you guys going to tell me what was going on, or am I going to have to squeeze it out of you?” Devon asked. No one volunteered any information.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  What do you do when the show is all done?

  Where do you go when the people go home? …

  But what do you do with the leftover wine?

  —MELANIE, “Leftover Wine”

  Once outside the gang spread out from a semi-solid nucleus and blended in with the busy sidewalks as they moved at a quick pace through the late-afternoon crowds of Chinatown. They passed fish vendors and vegetable stands, little metal carts serving jook and dumplings, and stores selling trinkets, perfume, and electronic equipment.Every one of the vendors had a deal and hawked his wares at the passersby.

  “Five dollar, sunglasses. Very nice. Very expensive.” “Ten-dollar watch. Real gold plate, Cartier.” “Fresh terrapin!” “Sushi. Fresh mackerel!”

  Devon stopped. Her eyes teared up as she inhaled deeply.

  Alex shook her head and chuckled. “You’re the only person I know who gets sentimental over the smell of piss and dead fish.”

  “We used to call each other Saba Sisters because we both loved mackerel sushi.”

  “Beka always said you were more Asian than she was.”

  “An egg.” Devon recalled the slang term for a Caucasian who acted Asian.

  “You grew up in Taiwan, right?” Alex asked.

  “Maybe that’s why I miss Chinatown so much.”

  “Sam could tell you. He’s the psychologist.” They had stopped at Josh and Katiti’s Land Rover, conveniently parked on Mulberry Street next to Lung Moon Bakery. Devon ran in and bought some coconut rolls for breakfast the next morning, just in case Loch showed up, then returned to the gang outside.

  “Anyone need a ride uptown?” Josh offered.

  Katiti pinched him. “Honey, remember, we have errands to run.”

  He reneged on his offer.

  “This has been like The Big Chill meets Friends in Bright Lights, Big City!” Alexandra reduced the entire group to a media stereotype.

  “Except there are black people,” Katiti pointed out.

  “All we’re missing is a Hispanic and Native American component to be completely PC,” Alex added.

  “I’m one-eighth Shinnecock,” Devon told them. “Sherman Alexie might not like me saying that, but he’s not here.”

  Katiti held up her perpetually tan arms. “And I’m here to represent the Latin quarter as well as black.”

  “You’re brown sugar, Katiti. I’m black.” Godwyn held his perfect ebony arm next to her honey-toned skin.

  “God, you’re beyond black! And god I love saying that!” She laughed raucously.

  “I wonder what our ratings would be?” Alex was in full-swing producer mode now.

  “Who gives a damn what we are?” Sam swore. “We’re here and that’s all that matters!”

  “I wish I had my camera,” Alex said wistfully.

  Devon had not thought about it before and turned to look at her.

  “Do you still have the videos?”

  “The whole lot.” Alex’s eyes drifted up and down the street as if she was looking for an angle to shoot.

  “What video?” Katiti asked.

  Devon watched her reaction. “I’d love to see New Year’s 1984.”

  “You have that one?” Katiti hissed at her.

  “It’s in storage in L.A.”

  Devon squeezed her arm tightly so as to get her attention. “I want to see the tapes. I’m serious, Alex.”

  “Why do you care about 1984?” Josh piped in.

  Alex pulled her hand through her short-cropped hair and squinted at Devon. “What’s this about?”

  “Closure,” Sam answered for Devon. She smiled at him, but his approval of her request made her feel uneasy for some reason. She wasn’t sure she wanted anyone else knowing that the tapes were still in existence, but now they all knew. It occurred to her that if one of them was a murderer she had just put Alex and herself into jeopardy. Unless Alex was the murderer, and then she wouldn’t let Devon have the tapes.

  Alex squeezed her hand. “I’ll have my assistant find them. They’re yours.”

  Devon watched as the others began to stare longingly at the filthy pavement of Canal Street under their feet, and another awkward silence shook their reality. They could only share brief moments of tenderness before the quick clouds of New York’s hard-edged brusqueness tumbled back across their lives and their faces. “There’s going to be a memorial service sometime this week,” she announced.

  “Call my mom for the place and time. We’re in
the book.”

  They hugged each other good-bye, then began to move off down the street, each going their separate ways as they had so many years ago, only to be reunited by death or birthdays: Josh and Katiti on errands, Sam to the Hamptons-bound jitney bus, Alex to a friend’s loft in Tribeca. Maddie and Godwyn disappeared into the crowd and suddenly Devon found herself alone on the street, the words to one of Beka’s favorite Melanie tunes playing in her ears: What do you do when the show is all done? Where do you go when the people go home? … But what do you do with the leftover wine?

  She headed down the street unable to make out any familiar places—Chinatown had been renovated in the past few years and seemed strange with its shiny new exterior. At Lafayette she stopped and looked up. There were the windows to the loft hanging high above the holiday crowds. She hadn’t planned to, but she found herself looking into the vendors’ shops for the way into 255 Canal Street.

  Hans’s mail truck pulled partway up Devon’s driveway, then stopped.Aileen’s car was not parked there and he recognized the detectives’car immediately. He let the engine idle in neutral and eased up on the brake, coasting back down the drive before shifting into reverse to turn around on Bay Street. There was only one cop he cared to speak to at that moment and it wasn’t either of the two in her house.He turned right on Bay and headed for home. Devon would call—he knew that. It was just a matter of time.

  The loft’s windows were above her but the entrance to the loft seemed to have evaporated. She stuck her head inside a jewelry vendor’s booth and saw the familiar old mailboxes on the wall just behind where the booth stopped. It was completely obscured from the outside. Beka would have loved it; she had always hated anyone being able to find where she lived.

  Devon climbed the first two flights of stairs past the beauty salon and electronics store. She could remember many nights looking down that long stretch of stairs, feeling the slightest hint of vertigo. They had counted the stairs once, sixty in a row. One thing they hadn’t needed when living in the loft was to work out on any Stairmaster machines. On the landing of the third floor she caught her breath and tried not to acknowledge to herself that she was out of shape. One more flight of stairs and there it was—the same old glossy black door that had once led to their home.