Lies You Wanted to Hear (3 page)

Matt

Sandor spotted me talking to the maître d’ in the foyer of the restaurant.

“Matyas!” He rushed over and wrapped me in a bear hug. “Where have you been, my friend? Every day I am thinking, Where is Matyas? Maybe I should call police.” He roared with laughter at his own joke. “Now, tell me, who is beautiful lady?”

“Sandor, this is Lucy Thornhill. Lucy, Sandor Toth.”

“
Enchanté
.” He took her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. “Welcome to Café Budapest.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

“You have known Matyas long time?” He put his arm around me.

She smiled. “About fifteen minutes.”

“Ah, let me tell you, this man, he save my life. Without him, I am
lapcsánka
.” Sandor laughed and slapped his palms together. “Potato pancake.”

He led us to a table in back and pulled out a chair for Lucy. A busboy filled our water glasses and lit the candles. There was a single red rose in a slender vase on the table. I had never been to Europe, but the restaurant had an Old World feel to it. Not lavish, more about class than money. The kind of place you see in the movies where Ingrid Bergman walks in and spies an old lover across the room. Two waiters in tuxedos came to the table. One brought a plate of bread crusts and feta cheese spread. The other had a bottle of Dom Pérignon and three glasses. The waiter popped the cork and poured the champagne.

Sandor held up his glass for a toast. “To good friends—and love.”

When he left to attend to other customers, Lucy gave me a sly smile. “Jill didn’t tell me you were the lost dauphin of Hungary.”

I made a face. “It’s embarrassing. He goes a little overboard sometimes.”

“Is your real name Matyas?”

“No, just Sandor’s way of pretending I’m Hungarian. He calls me ‘nephew’ sometimes, like I’m part of his family.”

“How did you meet him? He said you saved his life.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Tell me. I love stories.”

“Sandor was down in the theater district, picking up tickets for some show. The guy has a million connections. He’s always offering me seats to the Red Sox, Celtics, concerts, you name it. He parked his new Mercedes in an alley near the Wilbur and ran in to see the manager.”

The waiter came with the menus.

Lucy finished her champagne. “If this stuff were eight bucks a bottle,” she said, grinning, “the whole world would be drunk all the time.”

I refilled her glass.

“Anyway, the place where Sandor parked was illegal, but he figured no big deal, he’d be back in five minutes. When he came out of the theater, he heard the Mercedes starting and knew immediately what was happening.” I told her the car was a 450SL red sports coupe. The salesman at the dealership had warned Sandor the car was on top of the wish list for thieves.

Lucy spread some feta on a bread crust, tasted it, and nodded her approval. The waiter asked if we were ready to order our appetizers.

“You pick,” she said. “I’m sure everything’s marvelous.”

I asked for foie gras and cabbage rolls.

“Sandor didn’t stop to think. Just heard the car engine and charged down the alley. He’s incredibly strong, like a little bull. He grabbed the thief who was getting in the car on the passenger’s side and smashed his face down on the top of the door. The guy in the driver’s seat threw the car in reverse and knocked Sandor down and jumped out of the car to help his friend. Sandor tried to get up, but the driver kicked him and broke his jaw. The other thief was dazed, blood spurting from his eye socket. His friend was trying to get him in the car when I walked by the alley.”

Lucy’s face was rapt. It was hard to look at her and keep my train of thought. She wasn’t beautiful exactly, but incredibly sexy. Bewitching. Like she could twitch her nose and turn you into an armadillo.

“I saw Sandor writhing on the ground. It wasn’t clear what the situation was, but something bad was obviously going down. I drew my gun and yelled at the thieves to put their hands on top of the car, which they did. Believe it or not, that’s the first and only time since I joined the police force I’ve ever pointed my gun at someone.”

“God, I can’t imagine. Were you scared? Your adrenaline level must have been off the charts.”

“It was definitely a rush. I don’t think I had time to be scared. More like I was super aware, trying to put all the pieces together. In the back of my mind, I kept wondering if the thieves had an accomplice, somebody about to come around the corner and shoot me in the back. Meanwhile, the guy lying on the ground
looked
like the victim, but I couldn’t be sure. Luckily, everything turned out fine.”

“Fascinating.” She leaned forward. “I can see why Sandor’s so grateful to you.”

“I don’t know. I tried to tell him I was just doing my job, but he’s convinced the driver was about to back up the car and run over him.”

“Excuse me, sir,” the waiter said. He put our appetizers on the table. “Mr. Toth is recommending an excellent Chateauneuf-du-pape with your dinner this evening.”

“Sure, why not.” I looked at Lucy and shrugged again. “So I get treated like the lost dauphin.”

The waiter brought our entrées and we savored our food. I’d been to the restaurant with a date three or four times and always brought my mother when she came for a visit. I didn’t know how much it cost and didn’t want to know. The menus at my table never had prices on them.

Lucy was wearing a thin silver chain with a turquoise pendant and matching turquoise earrings. She had a small brown birthmark shaped like an acorn just below her right collarbone that I couldn’t stop staring at. It made me think of the term “beauty mark,” which I had never really considered before. It was uncanny the way that tiny imperfection made her seem even more attractive. I tried to squelch my fantasies about seeing her naked and actually touching her smooth, tanned skin. Who was the idiot who let this woman go? Two old-fashioned silver combs held her long hair back from her face.

I said, “Are your hair combs antique?”

“Yes.” She touched one then the other as if she had forgotten they were there.

“They’re extraordinary.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, knowing I meant her. “They were my grandmother’s.”

I asked where she worked, where she’d gone to college. Her answers were short. She didn’t want to talk about herself, though she mentioned that she had recently taken two courses at the Cambridge Adult Education Center—pottery and conversational French.

“I’m trying to find my
grande
passion
.” She pushed her food around with her fork, then muttered under her breath, “Something besides falling in love with assholes.”

I let that one go, a conversation for another time.

“So what happened today?” she said.

“What?”

“At work? The thing that almost made you late.”

I told her the story.

“The man was the girl’s stepfather,” I said. “Turns out he’d been molesting her for years. The girl was like a firecracker with the fuse lit. She seemed angrier at her mother than she was at him. And the mother…it was almost like she thought it was the girl’s fault.”

“I can see that. The girl blames her mother for letting it happen. A mother is supposed to protect her daughter, not let some pervert rape her. Meanwhile, the mother knows she failed—she’s the one who brought that monster into the house—but she can’t face it, so she turns on the kid.”

“Huh? You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Are you a therapist or something?”

“No, no, I would make a
really
bad therapist.” She laughed. “Just ask mine.”

The waiter came by and refilled Lucy’s glass. She was drinking much more than I was but didn’t seem to notice me holding back. The last thing I wanted was to get drunk and do something stupid.

“Enough,” she said. “This food is too good.” She pushed her plate away. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No, not at all.” I didn’t smoke myself. I picked up the candle from the table and held it out for her. She touched my hand as a gesture of thanks and a little jolt of electricity went through me.

She said, “I read a book about sex abuse a few years ago. Turns out it happens everywhere. Rich people, poor people, black, white. One of those clubs without any restrictions. Like beating the shit out of your wife. Any two-fisted son-of-a-bitch can join.”

Her face was flushed. She’d only taken a few drags on her cigarette, but she ground it into a crooked stub in the ashtray. Here was that edge Jill had mentioned, her anger so intense I got the feeling she might have been smacked around by some shithead herself.

She asked me how I’d decided to become a cop. I told her it was something I’d always been interested in. I went to community college near my home in Butler, Pennsylvania, and majored in criminology.

“I thought about going on for a four-year degree,” I said, “but I felt a little burned out on school. Luckily, I had a high lottery number and didn’t have to worry about the draft. I told my mom I wanted to do a little traveling and she was great about it. I’m an only child. My father died in a mining accident when I was a baby, and my mom raised me herself. We’re real close, but she never tried to smother me. She told me to go see the country. She said she wished she could have done it herself.” Lucy took out another cigarette. “The farthest I’d ever been away from home was a field trip to Washington, D.C. I had an old Rambler with a stick on the floor and headed west. I got a job in Minneapolis loading freight cars. When the weather got chilly, I headed south. The car gave out in Missouri, so I got on a bus and kept on going.”

“Sounds neat.”

“Yeah, it was. I worked odd jobs, bummed around for a year and a half. Got to see some interesting places, met some terrific people.”

Lucy said, “So, in all your travels, what was your favorite place?”

I didn’t have to think. “Puerto Rico.”

“Really?” She narrowed her eyes. “Aww, that’s where you fell in love.”

“Fell in love with surfing,” I said, not wanting to talk about my Puerto Rican girlfriend. “You can’t believe how blue the water is.”

She grinned and let me off the hook.

I told her about the retired Boston police lieutenant I met on the plane back to the States from Puerto Rico. When I mentioned my interest in law enforcement to the lieutenant, he offered to make a few phone calls on my behalf. Eight months later I had my shield.

Lucy said, “Did you meet Terry on the job?”

“No, through softball. He’s good friends with a couple other guys on the team. I actually know Jill better. She talked me into coming to school and speaking to her fourth-grade class.”

“And talked you into going out with me.”

“Well, there’re only three bachelors on the team.” I smiled and took a chance. “The other two turned her down.” It’s always tricky, making a joke like that with a woman.

Lucy laughed. “The smart ones always do.”

The waiter came by and asked if we wanted coffee or dessert. Lucy said just coffee. I ordered one of the house specials, chestnut purée with rum and whipped cream. She smoked her third cigarette. Sometimes when she took a drag, she’d hold the cloud of smoke in her mouth for a second with her lips parted, then curl her tongue and pull the smoke in. She seemed to do it unconsciously. I wondered if she had any idea how seductive it was.

“Impressive,” she said, watching me dig into my dessert. She spooned a dollop of whipped cream from my plate and put it in her coffee. “I like a man with an
appetite
.” As soon as she said it, she made a funny face. “Oh my god—” She covered her mouth with her hand, but a giggle squirted through her fingers. “I can’t believe I just said that.” She tried to suppress her laugh for a moment, then threw her head back and let out a husky, wine-soaked howl that made other people in the restaurant turn and stare. I reached across the table and interlocked my fingers with hers.

Sandor came to the table with a bottle of apricot brandy and insisted we share a glass. Lucy thanked him for his hospitality.

Sandor said to me. “You must bring your lady back.”

“I will, definitely,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “You want me to call taxi for you?”

“Yes, please,” I said. “Thank you for everything.”

Sandor took the rose from the vase on the table and handed it to Lucy. “Here is souvenir of your first visit to Café Budapest. You must come back soon.” He looked as smitten as I was.

On the sidewalk, Lucy twirled the rose between her fingers. She snapped the stem in half and gnawed on the tough fibers until she’d broken it in two. Then she stuck the rose in her hair and struck a pose, one hand on her hip.

“What do you think?”

“
Me
gusta
.”

She smiled. “Did that Puerto Rican
señorita
teach you Spanish?”

“Look at that sky,” I said. It was dusk, the city bathed in a glow of red and purple.

Two businessmen walked by with their briefcases. One leaned toward the other and said something, and they both laughed. If the joke was on me, I didn’t care. The cab pulled up to the curb. Lucy and I got in the backseat, and she gave the driver her address.

Lucy sat close and rubbed her hand softly on my thigh. “What else did the
señorita
teach you?”

I rolled down the window and let the warm air blow on my face. We drove along the river with the colors of the sky reflecting on the water. Couples were strolling along the Esplanade. I’d never seen the city look more beautiful. The driver crossed the bridge to Cambridge and made a few turns. Halfway down the block on Lucy’s street, she pointed at a ramshackle house with a lopsided front porch, most of the balusters broken or missing.

As we got out of the cab, I asked the driver to wait.

“You’re not coming in?” Lucy said, pouting.

“I better take a rain check.” Since we’d left the restaurant, I had been debating with myself about what to do if she offered.

She leaned against me. “It’s not raining, Matt.” It was the first time she had said my name.