The Starr Sting Scale

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “Her family?” Somehow I had never pictured the “thieving wop” with a family. I think my dad said both her parents died in a boating accident when she was ten, or was it a bowling accident? In any case, he made me think he was my only relative, and I took him at his word.

  “The Scarpellos were an old Italian family.” Roberto takes a tiny sip of the grappa, barely wetting his lips. “The oldest kind. Sicilian.”

  Even after a bottle of Johnny Walker, I know what that means. “She was La Cosa Nostra?” Just like Charlotte said. She was connected. I can’t believe it. I’m going to dig my father out of his grave and slap him for not telling me. The mob doesn’t have any real pull where we are. The Daybreak Boys, an MC run out of Pittsburg, controls the girls and the drugs here, along with the firepower that goes with them. The Daybreak Boys are vicious bastards: less of a motorcycle club and more a fraternity of psychopaths.

  “Not her, her grandfather. El Mafioso. Like the son, her father. Although he and his wife got blown up in their Cadillac one day on the way to mass.” Neither bowling or in a boat, I think to myself. My mother did have family, and none of them ever tried to find me. Maybe they didn’t know I existed.

  “Do you think they knew about me?” I say, silently ordering a grappa for myself.

  “I don’t think so at first. They lost track of your mother after they excommunicated her for marrying your father. El Protestante.” These Roman Catholic mob families kill me. They don’t excommunicate you for torturing someone with a wet towel and a pair of battery cables, but fuck a Protestant and you’re out.

  “They looked for your father after they hear she disappeared. But he can be a hard man to find.” We did move around a lot after mom did her runner. But I figured we were trying to lose the law, not the Mob.

  “I think perhaps they find him when you went on trial for that …” He waves one well-manicured hand in dismissal. “That unfortunate business with the wife whose husband died.”

  My name was in the papers. My picture. I’ve been told I look like my mother. They probably put two and two together.

  “But why did they want to find my father so bad? He didn’t know where she was. You’d think they’d be ecstatic that she dumped him.” She also dumped me, I’m thinking, but I don’t say that, at the risk of sounding like I give a shit.

  “They look for your father not because your mother ‘dumped him,’ as you say, but because they think he may have dumped her.”

  “What do you mean?” But this is something Charlotte already hinted at.

  “Like at the bottom of the lake.”

  “So they were after my dad because they thought he killed my mother?” Just then Shannon comes back, throws her drunken arms around me, and slips me the tongue. I yank her off but don’t let go of her shirt. I may want that tongue later.

  “They are not the only ones who think it, Candace Starr.” He downs the last sip of his grappa. “Or the only ones who think La Cosa Nostra finally did find Mike Starr after all those years.” He smiles. “Your mother, Angela, she was a beautiful woman. Not as tall as you but still very similar.” He steps off the bar stool and tips his hat. “Goodnight, ladies.”

  The little guy sails through the chaos of The Goon like a ship with a white fedora sail. Shannon burps loudly in my ear and then whispers in it. I throw back a last shot and take her roughly onto my lap, kissing her long and deep on her sloppy, full lips. The guys at the bar stare.

  “What are you looking at?” I snarl. They turn in unison back to the bar. They know me, and of me, and huddle together trying to make themselves small.

  I take Shannon back to my apartment above the E-Zee Market to lose myself for a while in the salty slickness of skin on skin. I won’t sleep much tonight after what the old man has said, so I might as well not be alone. And like I said, I’m a girl who knows how to make use of what’s handy.

  The next morning, a protesting Majd unlocks the door of my apartment for Malone, who stands in the open doorway looking like a storm about to hit. She’s pissed, mostly because it isn’t morning. It’s noon. Shannon is passed out across me on the mattress, starkers, her tramp-stamped ass in the air. We make a fleshy X on the bed.

  “You were supposed to meet me at nine,” Malone roars. My head is not appreciative. I give Shannon a nudge and she rolls off me with a groan. Then I stand up full frontal and ask Malone to hand me the long T-shirt hanging off a bare-bulb lamp at the door. She does. Majd runs down the stairs and back to the safety of his cash register. I pull the T-shirt over my head and give Shannon a light boot with my foot.

  “Get up, girl, the fuzz is here.”

  She groans again. I start collecting her clothes, dumping them on top of her as she lies there comatose. She doesn’t really come fully awake until the end of a pointy stiletto catches her on an outstretched forearm.

  “Okay, okay, already.” She gathers her shit and disappears into the can to get dressed.

  “You can’t pull this crap with me, Candace,” Malone says, looking at me all serious while I stand there in a T-shirt that just barely skirts my bush.

  “Keep your voice down,” I say. “Some of us have well-earned hangovers here.” I bend over to pick up yesterday’s panties from the floor and pull them on. Then I grab a pair of clean jeans from a basket in the corner. Charlotte had come by yesterday while I was out and done some of my laundry, even ironed my underwear, making them too stiff to wear. She’s trying to buy my silence to Rod about what she told me, using Tide and loving starch. Not only did I miss her visit yesterday but also the phone call from Rod’s dear old mother in St. John’s. Majd is going to get the wrong idea with all these maternal types checking in on me and start to think I actually have a heart or something.

  “We made a deal, Candace,” Malone says. She’s not letting it go.

  “Tell me, Malone. Why do you care so much? Sounds to me like Tyler Brent was a real piece of work. I mean, he tried to gas an eight-year-old for her piggy bank.” I grab a Mason jar from the kitchen counter that runs down one side of the one-room apartment and fill it with water from the sink. Leaning against the fridge, I gulp it down. The water tastes like it’s been run through a rusty washing machine before hitting the pipes. Then I start brushing my teeth. Like I said, I take care of my mouth.

  “That’s not all he did. You didn’t see the whole file,” Malone says with a sigh as she comes through the doorway. She takes in the Formica table covered with empty beer and wine bottles then moves a few aside so she can lean on it without getting her London Fog dirty. “Seems to me that child will be sleeping a whole lot sounder now that her brother’s not around.”

  “If you knew all that shit, why didn’t you pull the kid in long ago?”

  “As you know, Candace, knowing something and making it stick can be two different things. If they weren’t, you’d be doing consecutive life terms right now.” Clever comeback. And reasonably true.

  “Whatever,” I say, dumping the Mason jar in the sink with the other dirty glasses. “But say what you will. As bad as I was, I never stuck a kid’s head in an oven.”

  “Yet,” Malone says.

  Shannon comes out of the washroom dressed in the clothes she wore the night before. She gives me a kiss before she leaves.

  “Call me?”

  “Don’t have a phone,” I tell her. I really do prefer men. Fewer complications.

  “Oh,” she says, glancing self-consciously at Malone. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around then.”

  “Yeah, see you around,” I say, but I’ve already turned to face the long mirror on the door. With all the rolling around last night, my thick curly hair is almost as wide as it is long. I grab a hair band and wrestle it into a messy bun. By the time I turn around, Shannon’s gone.

  “I didn’t know you were into women,” Malone says.

  “I’m into everything,” I say, pulling my black Converse high-tops on, snagging my leather jacket from behind the door. “But right now I have to go see a friend
.”

  “What?” Malone grabs my arm before I can leave. I stop and look down at her hand, each finger white-tipped with a half-moon French manicure.

  “You don’t want to do that.” I keep my voice as level as I can.

  “What are you going to do, Candace, break my neck right here? Majd is downstairs and half a dozen witnesses saw me come up here. You take out a cop, you’re up for some serious downtime.” She’s right that I’d probably get caught if I did anything. But she’s wrong if she thinks that would stop me.

  “I just need to see a friend,” I say slowly, emphasizing each word. Then I remove her hand from my arm and try to soften my tone a little. I’ll get more out of this fly with molasses than with my usual vinegar. “I promise I’ll meet you in an hour, Malone. At The Goon. I just really need to take care of something first.”

  She shakes her bobbed head as if she can’t believe she’s going along with the plan of a hustler like me. I can’t believe that she is either. But she has stipulations.

  “Not at The Goon,” she says. “I think we’ve seen what happens when you get yourself too close to a bar. I’ll meet you at The Tulip, the luncheonette on Main. It’s down the street from Tyler’s school. I’ve set up an interview with the principal.”

  “Fine,” I say and take off out the door. Malone can let herself out.

  “What about those security tapes?” she shouts down the stairwell at me.

  “Ask Majd. He has them,” I call up over my shoulder. I took care of those tapes before I even met Malone at the morgue yesterday. I’ve got my priorities straight.

  Once outside, I start walking toward Rod’s place. Fresh-smelling laundry or not, I’m not keeping my mouth shut about what I’ve been told. And Uncle Rod better come as clean as my underwear did.

  He’s on the roof of his bungalow cleaning out the eavestroughs when I walk up the lawn, grab a good-sized rock from the garden, and throw it at him. It hits him square on the right shin.

  “Jaysus! What did you do that for?”

  “That’s for lying to me,” I holler up at Uncle Rod. Then I grab the garden gnome I gave him for his fiftieth birthday and smash it on the front steps.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, what’s gotten into you, Candace? I was going to buy that little fella his own wheelbarrow and all.” He goes to get on the ladder to climb down and talk to me, but I pull it away and it falls sideways onto the driveway with a clatter.

  Rod stands at the edge of the roof, pulls out a smoke, and lights it. “All right, so what’s got your knickers in a twist?”

  I stand below him and look up, but it’s not that far. If I had a step ladder, I could grab him by the ankles and pull him down. “My mother’s family was La Cosa Nostra.”

  Rod blows out the smoke in his lungs. “And so what if they were?”

  “So what if they were?”

  “Your dad and I thought it was best you didn’t know too much about Angela. That woman was a disappointment, Candace. To all concerned.”

  “So much of a disappointment that dad put her six feet under?”

  This surprises him, and he chokes halfway through an inhalation. Rod only smokes when he’s doing outdoor work. He says it makes the fresh air smell sweeter. “Who told you that?”

  “Never mind who told me that,” I spit. “Is it true?”

  “Why don’t you bring that ladder back over here? I can climb on down and we’ll discuss it.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come now, Candace.”

  “I’m not bringing it over until you tell me. Did Dad have anything to do with my mother disappearing?”

  “Well, that would be both a yes and a no, kiddo.” He holds the cigarette with his thumb and forefinger, like a joint. He says it’s because he only had his dad’s hand-rolleds as a kid to pilfer from. If they weren’t held tightly at one end, you’d inhale a grainy mouthful of shag tobacco when you took a drag.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “He didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Although she sure did her best to murder him before she left. Came at him with a grapefruit knife when he was at breakfast and carved up his face a fair bit.”

  “A grapefruit knife?”

  “She wasn’t an exceptionally cordial girl, our Angela. But what she lacked in manners, she made up for with passion.”

  “Huh?”

  He sighs in exasperation, like he did when Charlotte stuck him with the Screech fishing lure. It must have hurt like hell, but like most pain Rod just found it inconvenient. “Your father was after having an affair with Shelley Wolfe. Angela found out and just about blew one of her tits over it. After he managed to get the grapefruit knife away from her, she packed her bags and left town. None of us seen her since.”

  Where had I heard the name Wolfe before? Then I remember.

  “Shelley Wolfe,” I say, trying to sound all nonchalant. “She any relation to Detective Doug Wolfe?”

  “Now how do you know that?” Rod’s eyes narrow for a second then he recalls he’s the one on the roof and not in a position to ask questions. “Shelley was his wife. Wolfe found the two of them in bed together when he came home early from a night shift. Your dad was outrunning more than a grapefruit knife after that caper.” He laughs, and I picture my dad taking off out a bedroom window in nothing but his skivvies, trying to dodge the meaty arms of that cuckolded cop.

  “Wolfe ever catch him?”

  “Can’t exactly arrest a man for screwing your wife better than you. Although I’m sure more than one man has tried.” He throws down the spent smoke and puts it out on one of the asphalt shingles with his boot. “Now how’s about you bring that ladder over and we can talk about this over a nice cup o’ tea.”

  “I can’t believe you and Dad never told me any of this.” Didn’t those two lugs realize that if a kid is given no logical reason for the heavily fucked-up behaviour of a parent, they just take the weight of the blame themselves? My mother hadn’t left because of me. Whether she left me on a highway median or a Ferris wheel or playing happily on the floor of my room, she left because she hated my father, not because she hated me. That is, if you believe she left at all and wasn’t buried in a shallow grave with a snapped neck, after being disarmed of the grapefruit knife. Uncle Rod lied to me or, at the very least, hid the lightness I could have gotten from the truth. And I’m not sure yet whether he’s still keeping me in the dark.

  “One more thing, Rod.” He folds his arms. He’s getting impatient now. Normally making Rod Jessome impatient is a dangerous pastime, but I’m practically family. “Do you think the Mob had anything to do with Dad’s death? You know, payback for screwing over their daughter.” Or possibly murdering her.

  Rod shakes his head. “I’ve got friends in the Scarpello clan, Candace. Believe me, they were happy your father took that woman off their hands. She was nuttier than a squirrel in a shit factory.” This is just one of his back-home sayings that make absolutely no sense at all. It’s a Newfoundland thing. Like fried bologna. I think he makes half of them up. I start down the sidewalk, the ladder still in the driveway.

  “See you later, Rod.”

  “Oh, come now, Candace, don’t be like that,” Rod pleads from the roof.

  But I’m going to be like that. And then some.

  CHAPTER 8

  MALONE IS WAITING OUTSIDE of The Tulip when I arrive, claiming we don’t have time to stop for lunch. Again. She shoves half a gyro in my hand and I eat it while we walk to Brassnose Academy, the high school Tyler attended.

  “Brassnose? Are you kidding me? Like brown nose?”

  “It’s named after some college in England.”

  “It’s named after some kid I punched out in sixth grade.”

  “Come on, Candace.”

  It’s only a block, she says. No point parking again. In between bites and me licking the tzatziki off my lips, she fills me in on what she’s found out since last night.

  “I contacted Daisy Chain Ad
ventures, the outfit that runs the zip line in the summer. They came to open the door to the shack on the other side of the gorge that houses the launch deck. But they needn’t have bothered.”

  “How come?”

  “The lock was already busted.”

  “I guess that’s what happens to shacks,” I say.

  “They just do it up to look like a shack,” says Malone. “Makes it seem more of an authentic jungle experience when they side it with bleached-out wooden boards. Underneath those boards it’s a one-room cement bunker built into the ridge with high windows and a wooden deck you step off for the ride. You can’t get to the launch deck without going through the shack. The door lock is actually pretty sophisticated. They didn’t want people breaking in and playing with the equipment.”

  “But somebody did.”

  “That’s right,” Malone admits, then goes on. “We found two sets of footprints in the dust on the floor inside. They only run the zip line from June to September. It’s been sitting empty for months.” She hands me a bottle of water to share and I drink the whole thing and hand it back. Malone stares at the empty bottle for a second then throws it in a recycling bin at a bus stop.

  “One of the prints is a match for Tyler’s size-ten skater shoes. The other set was smaller with a point, you know, like a high heel, around a woman’s size seven. There weren’t any prints leading away from the scene, but then again, it’s rained since we found him.” I swallow a piece of lamb or beef or whatever mystery meat they stuffed in the gyro and keep walking. Malone steps in front of me, forcing me to stop.

  “What size are your feet, Candace?” We both look down at my black high-tops. The same brand and size I’ve worn since I was twelve, when my dad told me not to worry, that a girl grew into her feet, just like a puppy.

  “Go ahead, Malone, try to match me to the fucking forensics. My feet wouldn’t fit in a size seven if you chopped off all my toes and fed them to the sharks.”

  She doesn’t have to take my word for it. She can see my feet are several sizes bigger than hers. I am often forced to order my footwear off the internet. It’s hard to find thigh-high PVC dominatrix boots in a size twelve at your local JCPenney.