3 Quarters (12 page)

“Thanks for being so good to my kid,” Bobby said.

“She's a delight,” Trevor said. “You're a lucky guy.”

“So are you,” Bobby said, nodding toward Connie, who smirked with obvious glee.

‘Trevor, you're going to be late for your two o'clock,” Connie said, checking her watch.

“What?” Trevor said.
“My
employees are going to fire
me?”

Connie straightened his jacket, kissed him on the lips, and said, “Bye, Trevor. Bobby and I have kid-chat to do.”

Bobby gave him a thumbs-up, and the third-richest cosmetics magnate in America walked out of Trump Tower toward a waiting gray Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce. He looked like an actor playing a corporate honcho.

“Go into Winston's and clean yourself up, sweetheart,” Connie said to Maggie, who was wiping mascara from her cheeks. “Your dad and I need to talk a minute. Alone.”

Maggie smiled at her father. She turned and blew her nose. Connie put her arm through Bobby's, grabbing the rock-hard bicep in her small, soft hand as she led him on an aimless walk and talk through the atrium, former husband and wife, divided by a few hundred million and yet still joined by the common blood of a child.

“Don't get me wrong, Bobby,” Connie said, clearly enjoying the stroll, passing mostly young tourists and affluent New Yorkers who came there to dine in the bistro or shop in the expensive boutiques. “I'm glad you're out. I never thought you killed that woman. You never raised a hand to me, so I just can't imagine you doing it to any other woman. You're too cornball macho to even curse in front of a female, never mind
murder
one. Freud would say that comes from having a mother you adore. That said, I have mixed emotions . . . Why the hell are my emotions always mixed about you?”

“You're looking good, too, Connie,” Bobby said, passing a plainclothes security guard, who nodded to Connie. Bobby thought her delicate rose-petal perfume was probably designed specially for her by Daddy's company, or maybe her husband's. She owned half of each now.

“I didn't comment on your looks because you already know, dumb disguise or not, you look like a goddamned Adonis,” she said. “You always did. It's what made me abandon all reason and run away with you and your civil-service paycheck to begin with. I'm sure with jail muscles no one'll be throwing you out of bed for eating animal crackers either.”

“Geez, and I thought it was my Shakespearian expertise that always turned you on, Con,” Bobby said.

“Don't call me
Con
,” she said. “It's what they call
you
now. And actually, you also had more brains than anyone as good-looking as you deserves. My ex-con ex-husband . . .”

She stopped and looked him up and down as if at auction and then took off the dopey black-rimmed glasses and looked him in the eyes. Bobby saw her tough facade fracture when she looked too deep, seeing things only they could know about each other. Things so foreign to the world she was born into, the world she again inhabited. He knew she saw summers down on the Jersey shore, nights in the balcony of Brooklyn's Kingsway movie house, afternoons in a leaky rowboat on the lake in Prospect Park, making love in front of the fireplace in the Brooklyn brownstone, a walk in a blizzard on the Coney Island boardwalk, the night he helped her deliver Maggie into the world. That was the night they swore they would never, ever part. The divorce. The awful press. Maggie's broken heart. Picking up the pieces. Then the murder trial . . . .

“Maggie is different,” Connie said softly. “She's not a kid anymore. She gets her period. She wears bras. She likes boys. She hates me and adores you. But what happened to you ripped the heart out of our little girl and crushed it. In some ways, it never mended. There wasn't one day she didn't talk about you coming home. ‘When Daddy comes home . . .' was the way she started every other sentence.”

“Well, I'm home and—”

“Let me finish; then I'll let you two be together,” she said. “I know you want to see her regularly. I want that, too. You are a terrific father, no denying that. But you're still facing a murder charge. The press is still going to be all over you. Again. Which means all over Maggie—and me. This woman prosecutor wants you so bad that I bet she dreams about you. Trevor hears things all the time in his political circles about how they're going to make you the law-and-order whipping boy of this guy Stone's governorship campaign—”

“Gubernatorial . . .”

“Don't you dare correct my English, you sanctimonious Brooklyn-bred asswipe,” Connie said.

Bobby laughed, and so did she, and then she exhaled deeply. “They're going to make you another Willie Horton,” she continued. “They're gonna make you an O.J. Simpson-style ‘He Got Away With Murder' poster boy.” She stopped, looked him in the eyes, and said, “I don't want Maggie in that poster.”

“Con—”

“Constance,” she said.

“Get off it, Con,” he said. “I don't want to ever hurt Maggie. Believe me.”

“If I have to, I'll go into family court to protect her from the media circus,” she said. “Ask the judge not to grant you visitation rights until your new trial is over. I could take her to Europe, or up to Connecticut for the duration.”

Bobby looked at her and then over at Maggie, who awaited them as they circled back her way near the elevators.

“Don't kick me when I'm down,” Bobby said. “I just want to see my kid. I promise I won't expose her to the media animals.”

“When the new trial starts, I don't want her in court,” she said, “—for some cheap sympathy trick your new lowlife lawyer might try to use.”

“I never let her near the first trial,” he said. “I don't even want her to watch any of this one on TV. Use the V chip. On all fourteen TVs.”

“Still can't resist sarcasm, can you?” she said. “The only reason I'm keeping Maggie in town is so she can take extra credit in summer school and because she wants—needs—to see you. Here I am feeling sorry for you, and—”

“Don't feel sorry for me,” Bobby said. “Just don't make it any harder for me and Maggie.”

She shook her head in a subtle way, her diamond earrings clicking, her eyes sparkling, her long lashes blinking. He half expected her to start purring.

“If you need money . . .”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Same macho Brooklyn-Irish horseshit,” she said. “I could have paid for an appeal. I could have gotten you a real lawyer the first time around and can still get you the best appeals lawyer in America instead of this Izzy Gleason, who looks like something I'd be afraid to step in and who'd probably represent his mother's killer. But you won't have it. No! You're
proud!
You've got your goddamned Irish, macho, working-class-hero dignity . . . .”

“I'll get along fine,” Bobby said. “As soon as I get a job, I'll send my support checks right away. Make up the arrears . . . .”

She laughed at the idea and waved her hand.

“I must confess I'm sort of jealous,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Of whoever gets the first post-jail tumble with you,” Connie said, squeezing his bicep again.

“I have to find Dorothea for that,” Bobby said. “Besides, she's at the heart of this mess. My mess . . .”

Connie stared at him and took a deep breath, as if she was certain Bobby was chasing a ghost. “Maggie liked Dorothea,” Connie said, exhaling slowly. “She must have been okay.”

“And you have Trevor,” he said. “Maggie says he's a . . . nice guy.”

“He is a nice guy,” Connie said, like someone speaking about her accountant. “He's . . . right for me. He fits. He doesn't always match my mood, but he's devoted.”

Bobby nodded.

“Thanks for not making this hard, Con,” Bobby said.

“I never had any trouble making it hard for you,” she said, squeezing his arm again. Her touch and smell sent involuntary shivers through him. He smiled.

“That was never our problem was it?” he said.

“The problem was that it was never a problem and it still ended,” Connie said with a deep sigh. “Just remember, I will make it
difficult
—that's a more appropriate word—for you, if I have to. I won't let Maggie get hurt again.”

Connie looked as if she wanted to kiss him good-bye, but she just swallowed, glanced at Maggie, who was rolling her eyes with impatience.

“Maybe we can have lunch sometime,” Connie said, shrugging. “And talk, like we used to, when we were best friends.”

“Absolutely,” Bobby said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure . . .”

“What do you
do
now, exactly?”

“I . . . well . . . I . . . I have absolutely no fucking idea,” she said with a baffled smile. “But the checks clear. Have Maggie back in an hour. She'll show you how to leave through the back way of Harry Winston's jewelers, the way Michael Jackson always ducked the press.”

As she walked away, Bobby heard her say, sotto voce, “God, you look good . . .” He watched her go and knew why he married her all those years ago. Trevor was one rich and lucky fool.

After successfully dodging the press, Bobby drove with Maggie to Lexington Avenue and parked the car in a bus stop across the street from one of those new computer cafés, where the two of them now sat at a window table, near a bank of computer terminals where people surfed the Internet as they sipped coffee.

Bobby noticed that Maggie was looking at him oddly. He'd left the fake-beard disguise in the car, so it wasn't his appearance that was bothering Maggie. It was something deeper, darker, and scarier.

“What?” Bobby felt self-conscious in front of his kid, whom he'd been separated from for too long.

“That's your third muffin, Dad,” Maggie said.

“How's school?”

“Sucks,” she said.

“Too bad,” Bobby said. “Got a boyfriend?”

“Mom makes it impossible,” she said.

“Why?”

“ 'Cause she's Mom.”

“Oh,” Bobby said. “She doesn't let you date?”

“Not the kind of guys I want to talk to,” she said.

“Who does she want you to date?”

“It's not
dating,
Dad,” she said, laughing. “You're either
talking
to a guy or
seeing
a guy. Like that.”

“Okay,” Bobby said. “Who's she want you
talking
to?”

“Money nerds,” Maggie said. “Assorted herbs.”

Bobby understood immediately. School sucked because it was filled with rich kids, the kind of kids Connie wanted her daughter to date.

“Who do you want to date . . .
talk
to?
See?”

She shrugged and took a sip of iced tea. “Tell me more about this boat,” Maggie said. “When you get it fixed up, can you take me out on it, to Coney Island? Mom says she's afraid I'll catch Ebola down Coney, but I miss Brooklyn
so
much, Dad. I miss living in a neighborhood. Trump Tower isn't a neighborhood; it's a birdcage for exotic pterodactyls. And who has St. Patrick's Cathedral for a parish church? I miss Holy Name. I miss schoolyards, corner pizza joints, hanging out on stoops, street corners, and Prospect Park. My friends . . .”

That was it, he thought. She still missed Brooklyn and the childhood she had before her parents' divorce made her divorce the place and the friends she loved. A kid's divorce was always more painful and complicated than the one the adults went through.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “I'll take you to Brooklyn soon, as long as you don't tell your mother. Would you like that?”

She nodded and then fell into another deep silence, looking away from her father, as if trying to reestablish the lines of communication that had been silenced by prison.

“Something else is bothering you, kiddo.”

She turned and just stared at him, her eyes sad and nervous.

‘Just say it,” Bobby said. “There are things we both need to say.”

“You said not to talk about jail,” Maggie said, stabbing her straw into the ice cubes in her glass.

“Well, if you really want to, we can,” Bobby said. “I just never liked war stories. But if it makes you feel better, ask me whatever you want.”

“I watch the news, Dad,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “That awful woman, Cis Tuzio, she's promising to put you back in jail. It scares me . . . .”

“I promised you I'm not going back,” Bobby said.

“Then what are you going to do about the murder charge? What about Dorothea?”

Bobby looked his kid in the eye. “I'm gonna find her,” he said.

“You think she's alive?”

“I have to believe she is.”