Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Astrid really hurt your feelings, didn’t she?”

  “ So much.”

  “Bunny, how can you take someone like that seriously? And you know the dinner party would have been excruciating. Chock-full of vapid Cammy-trash.”

  “If you’d known Astrid, back at Dobbs, she was just… damn. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

  He squeezed my knee. “You outgrew each other.”

  “Dean,” I said, “did you ever have a friend who made you believe there was not a shred of doubt you were going to accomplish something, like, I don’t know… splendid, or even heroic?”

  “Every time I dropped acid.”

  “Okay, look,” I said. “Whatever kind of shit happened in my life? Astrid always remembered who I was meant to be. And I remembered the same for her. It wasn’t that she had my back, or we’d exchange Hallmark cards every cheesy holiday. It was just, like, I had someone out in the world who’d keep a little ember of my mojo safely banked in the ashes.”

  “Until tonight,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  This would have been an optimum moment for my husband to look me square in the eye and proclaim, “Fear not, Bunny, for I cherish the eternal flame of your inner Batman.”

  Not least because I had exactly that kind of deep and abiding faith in him.

  Instead he gave my knee a final pat and said, “Teen-angst romanticism. You can’t expect that kind of thing to last.”

  He was a guy, after all. And also a grown-up, unlike his wife.

  We drove on in silence until I turned into the narrow lane with the hedges.

  It was nine o’clock. The house was dark, and both Jeeps were still gone.

  I turned off my car and pulled the key from its ignition.

  You’re twenty-seven years old, Madeline. Maybe it’s time to stop clapping for Tinkerbell.

  27

  Dean pled exhaustion and wandered up to bed. I kicked off my shoes in the living room and did a back layout onto the sofa. It was only nine-fifteen, but I didn’t see any point in turning on the lights. It wasn’t like there was a single book in the house, or even a television.

  I couldn’t stomach the idea of Town & Country again, but was getting just about desperate enough to check the upstairs bathrooms for shampoo bottles so I’d at least have marketing copy to read off their backs: Are you Limp and Unmanageable? Lather, rinse, repeat.

  The martinis were wearing off. I followed Dean upstairs and crawled into bed beside him, but he was already asleep.

  “What,” I asked, “no hot monkey love?”

  He snored a little and turned over onto his side.

  I tried burrowing under the covers and closing my eyes, but after a few minutes it became patently obvious that the sandman wasn’t coming by anytime soon.

  There are few things more lonely than lying awake in the darkness thirsting after the contented sleep of the person beside you.

  I got up again, walking softly downstairs to the kitchen for a lukewarm glass of tap water, then another—talismans against waking up to Astrid and Cammy with a hangover. The morning promised to suck plentifully enough.

  There was a bit of light from the numbered face of a phone on the kitchen wall. I dialed our apartment in the hope of conversational redemption, hanging up just before the machine kicked in on the seventh ring.

  Mom was beyond reach in Connecticut or something, on her way down from Maine. I wasn’t feeling ready to talk to her, anyway, and couldn’t think of a number for anyone else likely to be home in the city on a Saturday night.

  It was ten o’clock now. I reached into the front pocket of my jeans and pulled out my wallet, then cracked the icebox door open so I had enough light to read the number off Skwarecki’s business card.

  I dialed 7-1-8 and then a string of numbers, getting patched through to her extension.

  It rang once. I sat on the floor, Indian-style.

  “Homicide. Skwarecki.”

  I could hear the rumble of voices in the background, the clatter of a typewriter.

  “Hey, it’s Madeline. This a bad time?”

  “It’s slow. Mostly just me and the boys getting warmed up—swing a few bats around, knock the mud out of our cleats.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “You’re sounding bummed.”

  “Bored. I don’t know.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Suffolk County. I got dragged out for the Asshole Telethon.”

  She laughed. “That an annual thing?”

  “Year-round, I think.”

  “Sucks to be you, huh?”

  “Could be worse,” I said. “Could be dying in a famine, flies crawling over my eyelids.”

  “Yo! Get a load of Little Miss Perky Sparkles.”

  “Sorry. I totally didn’t mean to call you up and go Eeyore on your ass.”

  “Not like you dialed 1-800-Sunnybrook-Fucking-Farm over here. This could well be the most uplifting chat I’ll have tonight. You aren’t dead, and you’re not calling about someone who is. Hey, win-win.”

  “That doesn’t freak you out every time you pick up the phone at work?”

  “Beats typing reports,” she said.

  “So how’d you end up in Homicide, anyway?”

  “Fate, maybe,” she said. “The eeny-meeny-miny-mo of the universe or some shit.”

  “What’re you, from California now, Skwarecki?”

  “Yeah, right—‘Have a nice day’? I don’t fucking think so.”

  “So how’d it happen, then?” I asked.

  “Me in Homicide? Babe, I’m telling you, fate. No question.”

  “And?” I said. “Once upon a time—”

  “In a galaxy way the hell far, far away…”

  I could hear the creak of her chair as she leaned back. “It was my first day on the job, right? I’m fresh out of the academy, nineteen sixty-seven, and they send me to Bed-Stuy, for chrissake. I’m twenty years old, in stockings and this dumpy little skirt, and they give me a purse with a holster in it and a fucking ‘Police Matron’ hat that makes me look like I’m working for Pan Am or some shit, right?”

  “Ouch.”

  “Besides which,” she said, “this is waaaaay before Angie Dickinson made the world safe for female cops, okay? So I show up early for my very first eight-o’clock shift on the job, and the desk sergeant takes one look at me in this getup—all sweet-cheeked and dewy-eyed—and starts screaming about who’s the joker trying to fuck him in the ass by sending a goddamn girl over there, and how he doesn’t have enough shit to eat already without he’s gotta babysit Barbie and Skipper.”

  “Okay, I so would have burst into tears, at that point.”

  “Let me tell you, I’d already been through months of this shit, even before the academy. Shoulda heard my dad—and my brothers? You just get numb after a while if you’re lucky. And this jerk behind the desk, he doesn’t drag it out for too long. Just throws up his hands after maybe five minutes and tells me, ‘Stay out of fucking trouble, don’t do anything, just go walk up and down the sidewalk in front of the station house so I don’t have to fucking look at you, honey, because I’ve got actual work to do here this morning.’ ”

  “What time of year? I mean, is he throwing you out to wander around in the snow or something?”

  “October,” she said, “piece of cake.”

  “So you’re outside, walking back and forth on the sidewalk all day?”

  “This is what I’m led to believe. And at first it’s really busy—eight A.M., so you got the night shift leaving, morning guys coming in—a ton of people shoving around, right? In and out. And I’m just trying not to get run down, minding my business, down the fucking sidewalk, turn around, back up the fucking sidewalk….”

  I hear her take a sip of coffee or something on the other end of the line.

  “And after a while,” Skwarecki continued, “I notice there’s this guy sitting on the curb, mayb
e twenty feet from the front door? He’s got his head in his hands, knees pulled up, looking beat to shit, like the cat dragged him around the block all night.”

  “A cop?”

  “Nah,” she said. “Just some guy. I’m walking past him thinking maybe Hispanic: two-tone shoes, little porkpie hat pushed back on his head, one of those Cuban shirts—regular Mambo-King son of a bitch, except rumpled. Like he went out the night before dressed pretty sharp but now it’s the next morning, right?”

  “Just sitting there?” My butt was starting to fall asleep, so I stood up and refilled my water glass at the sink.

  “I’m telling you, Madeline, the crowd thins out and the guy doesn’t move. Not like he’s a stiff or anything, but he just sits there—doesn’t look up, nothing. Every once in a while I think maybe he’s crying a little, into his hands. But I’m supposed to stay out of trouble, right? So I just keep walking back and forth past him, bored out of my freaking mind, nothing else to look at.”

  “For how long?” I ask.

  “Three fucking hours, Madeline, until finally I can’t stand it anymore. He’s sobbing by this point. Shoulders jerking around, all that.”

  “So you talk to him?”

  “I try to, except he looks up and he’s got snot running out of his nose, eyes all red, and he tells me ‘ No habla inglés,’ right? But straight across the street there’s a bodega, so I go over there and try to find someone bilingual, could maybe help me out with this guy.”

  I swallow some water. “Mm-hmm…”

  “And there’s this little boy, twelve years old, speaks a little English? So I drag him back over to this guy, and say ‘Ask him what’s the matter,’ and he goes bi-bi-bip and the guy tells him bi-bi-bip right back, and then the kid looks up at me and goes, ‘Hey, Missus, he sad ’cause he kill his girlfriend.’ ”

  “Skwarecki, you are fucking kidding me,” I said.

  “Hand to God, Madeline. So I go, ‘Ask him when,’ and it’s all bi-bi-bi, bi-bi-bi again—back and forth, the two of them—and the kid looks up and says, ‘Three o’clock this morning.’ ”

  Her chair creaks in the background. “And I say, ‘ How did he kill her?’ so the kid asks him, and then he looks up and tells me, ‘Missus, he shoot her.’ So I say to this kid, ‘Ask him, where’s the gun?’ and when the kid does, Ricky Ricardo on the curb there reaches down the front of his pants and pulls out a chrome-plated fucking thirty-eight, which he then holds out to me, barrel-first.”

  “ Awesome,” I said.

  “Yeah, right? And I have a handkerchief in my pocket, so I pick the damn gun up with that—all dainty and shit—and shove it in my purse-holster thing, and then say to the boy, ‘Ask him, where’s his dead girlfriend now?’ So the kid does and the guy points across the street, and the kid tells me, ‘In that car right there, in the backseat under some blankets.’ So I go, ‘Ask him will he come inside with me,’ and the guy listens to the kid and then he nods and stands up and trots right into the station house with me, no problemo.”

  “Dude, Skwarecki,” I said, sitting there in the dark and shaking my head in wonder.

  “Maddie, you should’ve seen that desk sergeant. Pissed off? I’m telling you, fucking red in the face, jumping up and down, all, ‘I told you to stay out of trouble, not talk to anyone, and here you are, ya stupid bitch, dragging some nightclub spick into the station house—what’s your fucking problem? You fucking deaf?’ ”

  I started laughing.

  “And so of course I go, ‘ No, sir, it’s just that this man committed a homicide late last night, and I’ve got the murder weapon in my purse and the vic’s parked across the street in a Buick, and I thought you might want to take him into custody, sir.’”

  I said, “You weren’t kidding about the whole fate thing. Jesus H. Christ.”

  “Ach,” she said. “You wanna know from fate? The detectives upstairs stole the collar right out from under me.”

  “Even so, that’s the best story I’ve heard in just about forever. You totally cheered me up.”

  “You want me to really cheer you up?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “They’re going under.”

  “Huh?”

  “The two-bagger,” she said.

  “Skwarecki, what is that, golf?”

  “Madeline, your perps—Teddy’s mother and the boyfriend.”

  “Oh,” I said, comprehension dawning. “The two-bagger.”

  “ Now you’re cookin’ with gas,” she said.

  “Wow,” I said. “I can’t believe they’re dead.”

  “Whaddaya— dead? Jeez, you want to give me a heart attack?”

  “They’re not dead?”

  Skwarecki started laughing. “Where do you come up with this shit?”

  “Hey,” I said, “you tell me ‘bags’ and ‘under,’ I think funeral.”

  “ Funeral?” She cracked up.

  “What?” I said.

  She struggled for breath. “Listen to you, over here—regular fucking laugh riot, I swear.”

  “Yeah, yeah, me and Phyllis Diller. We have a goddamn gift.”

  She snickered again. “ Under…”

  “Skwarecki, I still have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Under what?”

  “ Arrest.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Duh.”

  “Yeah, well. Took you long enough.”

  “So when does this happen?” I asked.

  “Tonight,” she said. “We’ll bring ’em down here, get ’em in the box.”

  “Skwarecki, that is the best news. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Hey, I would’ve been trying to get ahold of you, anyway, give you a heads-up.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Bost is gonna need you to testify for the grand jury.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime this week, probably. The arraignment’s Monday, then she’s got about six days to go after an indictment.”

  “So does she need me for the arraignment, too?”

  “That’s just about bail. No point in you coming out for that.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “You want to meet up maybe Tuesday morning, we can walk you through the rest of it.”

  “I’ll give you a call from work first thing Monday, when I know my schedule for the week. Then I’ve gotta go meet my mother for lunch or some shit.”

  “Sounds good,” she said. “So we got you cheered up, now, or what?”

  “Just like a whole new world,” I said, “all shiny and lemon scented.”

  “Night, then. I gotta hit it.”

  “Hey, can I ask one more question?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Any idea which one of them killed Teddy?”

  “We like the boyfriend, but we’ll charge Angela, too.”

  “Did you talk to Mrs. Underhill?”

  “Couple nights ago, right after I saw you.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “We’re thinking she’ll testify,” she said. “You did good.”

  “God willing.”

  “Yeah, right?”

  28

  I finally slept okay, considering.

  Dean woke up at dawn, his circadian rhythm still governed by some lingering neurochemical trace of childhood heifers and cornfields. He went for a long walk but was back downstairs with Christoph by the time I’d stumbled out of bed myself.

  Our host pressed us to stay on through lunch at the very least, but we extricated ourselves by pleading the onus of nonspecific untended responsibilities back on Sixteenth Street, not to mention the time-suck logistics of returning my car to its barn before catching a train into the city from Locust Valley.

  “If you’d ever like to park it behind the office in New Jersey, you’re welcome to,” said Christoph. “It might be more convenient.”

  He smiled at me, eyes crinkling up.

  I thanked him for the offer just as Astrid wandered downstairs, wine-stale and bleary
-eyed.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked, taking in our little pair of bags perched stoutly by the front door.

  “Needs must,” I said.

  “Kiss-kiss.” She leaned in to assail me with a rank blast of ashtray and soured perfume.

  I spoke into her ear. “Best to Cammy, and she owes me six Percodan.”

  She pulled back, blinking at me. “Darling, no hard feelings? It was entirely necessary. We’d never have survived that wretched dinner otherwise.”

  “Mmm… God knows we all have friends whose company one must be drugged to endure.”

  Astrid clapped her hands. “That reminds me, I got you a present.”

  She tripped lightly upstairs, returning moments later with a hefty and rather worn paperback book.

  “I ran across this the other day and immediately thought of you,” she said, passing the volume to me.

  I looked down to read its title. “This is quite… unexpected. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  I wasn’t kidding. The book in my hands was Mein Kampf.

  I peeled back its cover, hoping she’d inscribed some sort of punchline, or at least an explanation.

  The book’s first page was blank but for an anonymous $2.00, scrawled in pencil across its upper right-hand corner.

  “I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean,” I said, tucking the repulsive tome under my arm, “but I’ll certainly remember our weekend here every time I see this.”

  “What was that all about?” asked Dean as we drove away.

  “I was hoping you might clue me in,” I said.

  He shook his head, hands thrown up in dismay.

  “Dean, I mean, Mein Kampf? What the fuck?”

  I stopped at the end of their road, looking left for oncoming traffic. “Was that intended as, like, an expression of her marital manifesto, or just some garbled-but-massive ‘Fuck you’?”

  “Maybe it’s a cry for help,” he said.

  “Like what? ‘Lassie! I’m trapped in a mineshaft! Run home and get the SS’?”

  “ ‘Help me, Obersturmbannführer Kenobi! You’re my only hope!’ ” replied Dean, raising a fist to each ear for the full Princess Leia.

  “I just don’t get it,” I said. “I really, really don’t.”