Mitchell Smith (5 page)

Brave talk, and nothing more. Maxfield watched too much TV.

Neither Ellie nor Nardone replied, except that Nardone gave Keneally, talking to Fingerprints across the room, a casual finger in farewell. It was a delayed response to Keneally’s, given in the bathroom more than two hours before. Nardone always remembered that sort of thing.

He and Keneally disliked each other, but both good Catholics, they did retreat at Avondale upstate every year, and it was a slender bond between them. They had never eaten at each other’s houses, though their wives urged it annually, after each retreat. At Avondale, one morning, Nardone had seen Keneally come weeping from the Host.

It was late, almost seven, when they stood out on the corner of Second and Sixty-eighth Street, breathing a cooler, relieving air. “Want to go downtown and find Classman?” said Nardone.

It had taken Ellie months to realize that Nardone’s zeal was a matter of duty, strictly, rather than the pleasures of action on the streets-and the displeasures of their homes-that held many detectives to their work past time. Nardone wanted badly to be home in Brooklyn with Connie and his daughter-and so proposed an evening with Classman and his report on Frankie Odum’s possible contribution to the Gaither thing (Frankie having been a major madam in a four-apartment shop just - -In this way, Ellie and west of the garment center) Nardone were, as partners, poorly

“No,” she said, “-it’s too late, and I’m tired, Tommy.”

Nardone nodded, said, “Well, take it easy,” and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. His breath smelled faintly of Tic Tacs. Then he walked away west on sixty-eight, heading for the subway; they’d hitched a ride uptown with a detective named Burke, from Forensic, to avoid the trip all the way back downtown to the garage.

Nardone had his head down as he walked, thinking, and Ellie saw people step out of his bulky way. Tourists, seeing sometimes in summer the bulge of his revolver at his hip, blousing out the fabric of his short-sleeve shirt seeing his thick, black curly hair, his blunt, swarthy face and brutal build, would take Nardone for a big-city gangster, a Mafia person. New Yorkers, who knew cheap shoes when they saw them, knew he was no such thing, but stepped aside for him in any case.

Nardone used the subway every day to get in and out of town. He was the only detective Ellie knew who lived in Brooklyn and didn’t drive into Manhattan. He left the car (an Oldsmobile with frequent transmission trouble) for Connie to use, shopping.

When, after slow weeks of acquaintance, of working together, Nardone had shown Ellie increasing care and tenderness, she had assumed he might be falling in love with her. She was surprised and flattered to discover it wasn’t so. Nardone simply liked her. He liked her very much-the first man who had liked her, as far as she knew. Certainly the first man who had liked her very much. This made the big man dear to her, and Connie Nardone-a gentle, dark, plump pigeon-sensing she had nothing to fear from this blond American partnering Tommy all over town-had welcomed Ellie into her home and cooked for her. For a few months Ellie had spent a good deal of time in Brooklyn, had eaten many dinners with them, and had taken her turn exercising Marie, crouching on the living-room floor alongside the silent child, moving the meager arms and legs in the sequence of a crawl-then, once the edge of the rug was reached, reversing direction back across the room toward the TV.

Marie’s eyes, dark and deep as cups of coffee, would seem to Ellie to belong to a different person than did those fragile, disconnected arms and legs. Marie, staring at her, made her feel odd-as if the brain damaged child commanded Ellie to come and crawl. Once, after she and Clara had had some drinks, Ellie dreamed that Marie Nardone stood up and danced, a quick snappy little prancing step, every evening after Ellie left their house.

For several months Ellie was close to the Nardones, and met their friends, and went on dates with Connie’s brother, a recorder in the borough court. Gradually, though, very gradually, she went to Brooklyn less. At first she was ashamed, thinking it was because of Marie, that the crippled child upset her-but she soon realized it wasn’t that at all, only the closeness of the Nardones that left no room for another person close to them. Connie’s brother, a very nice man, had been the one to reassure her, to tell her that.

“Connie and Tommy,” he’d said in his car on the way to Roosevelt Island after a hockey game. “-Tommy and Connie. Nobody could ever get in there edgewise from high school, you name it. Those two were the item-ask anybody. So, don’t feel bad.”

Charlie Corsaro was a decent man, burdened by his looks. Goodnatured, generous, and competent in his work, he was small, bald, and big-nosed.

“A Wait Disney rat,” he’d said to Ellie once, smiling, “-that’s what I look like.” He’d said that in a Chinese restaurant, the HuNan. Later, weeks later, after they’d gone on several dates, he’d driven her over the causeway onto the island one evening, parked in the street outside Ellie’s apartment, and asked if he could come in for a while, for coffee. She’d felt he was becoming too fond of her, and said no . . .

that she was tired. Charlie had sat in the car and smiled at her, a hard-edged shadow thrown by a streetlight slicing down across his face.

“Would you believe,” he said to her, “-would you believe that inside this body there’s a tall, nice-looking’ guy . . . who cares for you?”

Ellie saw there were tears in his eyes, and decided not to see him again.

Charlie had called her several times after that, then stopped. When she went to the Nardone’s thereafter, he was never there. Connie said something only once, while they were in the kitchen, and Tommy, with Marie on his lap, was watching television. When Connie mentioned her brother, Ellie told her she liked Charlie very much but couldn’t care for him more than that. -This may have pushed her a little farther from the Nardones, though Connie was always kind and welcoming to her, and gave her recipes.

Now, Tommy was lost down the block. Ellie couldn’t see him through the evening crowd anymore. She waited for the light, crossed the street, and walked downtown toward Bloomingdale’s.

There, she drifted in lambent gloom through the boutiques along the groundfloor entrance, seeing herself, counters of luscious goods, other drifting women reflected in dark mirrors at every turn. Snowy gloves in soft stacks.

air, smoothing the fine blanched kid She picked up one in her fingers, feeling the slight roughness of stitched decoration, the tiny supple roll of turned border paired along the sides of eve ‘ ‘nger. Ellie had gloves, though none as fine as these. “i never wore them. It and was still a little too early for gloves, even if she had the occasion. She walked through dreaming women to the scarves, and found buried in a furled banner of them one fine Italian . -little white heraldic silk in a small blue and white from a field of Prus animals, leopards and lions rampant reading $32. A larger sian blue. A minor tag at the corner label, off-white, loosely sewn, Linette. The clerk, fat and with a dark pageboy haircut and an in her twenties, F-aress, came unfortunate horizontally-striped green sweated folded the over to her, took her credit card and the scarf, silk into a Bloomingdale’s box, and left it on the counter while she marked the charge, processed the card, and handed Ellie her receipt, her card, and the box. -It just walked away pleased with fit into Ellie’s purse, and she it. At such times, the whole massive structure of the Police Department was a reassurance to her-, a guarantee of her credit, of every sensible purchase. And The retirers before, had imagined it was certain. Ellie once, yea the Department as her husband, a new husband, powerful and slow.

all treasure in her purse-where it pressed scarf a sm D, with & close to her shield case and I and a stainless Sm Wesson Bodyguard .38

(an expensive little revolver, too difficult for many policewomen, some policemen, too, to fire accurately for quick second and third shots)-Ellie took the stairs, and then an escalator up two floors.

At Sweaters she asked a girl for Rebecca Platt, and the clerk pointed through an aisle of cotton cable knits to the side wall. There, behind a long beige screen, P. le of the-fall collection Ellie found Mrs. Platt amid a samp shawls, vests, and leg warmers in rust, taupe, and tweed.

s still late “Rebecca, You’re rushing the season. -it summer out there.” from her work-a white plas Rebecca Platt looked up from the countertop display tree of leg waTmers-and pretended . Ellie was there.

“Jesus, it’s the Queen she hadn’t known of the Cops!” She smiled at Ellie as though she liked her.

Ellie had known Rebecca since her assignment in liaison with the Child Welfare people. Then, Rebecca’s husband, a wire man with Con-Ed, had beaten their little boy to death, and been arrested, tried, and sent to prison for it. Rebecca had played the addled female, a loyal and terrified innocent married to a brute. Ellie, as had most of the others dealing with the case, found Rebecca convincing. -A social worker named Lennie Spears, had, however, not found her so-and had introduced Ellie to a playmate of the martyred boy. That playmate, Jessie Chaiken, seven, had described the loyal Rebecca beating her deceased six-year-old’s bare feet with a coat hanger and a toilet plunger handle, while her husband, the brute, sniveling, held Justin firmly to the floor.

This information, whispered to Ellie by the small witness in Lennie Spears’ office, had led her to approach Rebecca-whom she then recognized as a thug, savage as any, but cocooned in a social shape both apparently harmless and respectable-with the notion of making a source of her. This person, Mrs. Platt, was a handsome woman in her forties, blackhaired, dark-complexioned, nervous, bangled, quick-motioned, humorous and capable. Successful in her profession, standing strong against a tidal flood of talented homosexual men, she countered their refinement with an extraordinary capacity for work.

Rebecca also, as she confided once to Ellie over coffee, fucked like a bunny-and had, by these muscular surrenders, made familiars of several executives in the store.

“But if I don’t get my gun,” she’d said to Ellie over a second cup, “-to hell with them. I give, but I’ve got to get, too.” She’d winked, and pursed bright lips in a little kiss.

Early in their relationship, Ellie, unable to prevent herself, mentioned what she knew of Rebecca’s cooperation, at least, in the destruction of her child. The result of this, introduced while they were walking together over to Second Avenue, had been no dreadful yawning of the pit, but only a glance at once weary and amused. “-You didn’t have any kids, did you?” Disturbing in the finality of its tense, indicating no hope for Ellie Klein ever to have a child to murmur to.

“No,” Ellie said.

“Well, sweetie, let me tell you, kids are wonderful6but angels, they’re not. Justin, may God keep and bless the small son-of-a-bitch, was a difficult little boy.” She’d sighed, and stopped to look into Liberty of London’s shop window. “Jesus-look at that cute kitsch! -And don’t tell me where you got your little made-up horror story. Dollars to doughnuts it was that tiny turd, Jessie Chaiken.” Another swift glance. `-Justin wasn’t much, he was perfect compared with that little nose-picking but , i you met the mother, you’d understa horror. -Well f nd.

I caught the oh-so- shy Jessie with my Justin in a closet once, and I mean deep in a closet, tooting on my Justin’s tiny wee-wee to beat the band. -Thank God Matt never knew about that one-he’d have been up the river that much sooner!” She’d taken Ellie’s arm to cross the Street, and noticed a girl walking in front of them. “-Jesus, look at that poor thing. She’s screwed herself bowlegged!

Men. Men and kids . . . Truth is, there’s not that much to any of them; a blow job or a peanut-butter sandwich, and they’re satisfied.”

This woman, who, after investigation in Records, Ellie found had been an occasional prostitute and sometime small-time dealer in cocaine years before, became for Ellie a minor source, too casual to be called an informanttoo employed and tough-minded, as well. Ellie had, in a roundabout way, threatened Rebecca with disclosure and indictment-Spears had urged it, and on the evidence of two other children beside Jessie Chaiken-but Rebecca had not been frightened.

“Listen, dear, I went to New York once”—she meant the hospital—“with a broken arm, and Mathew Platt broke it, and told Dr. Nussman he had. If I ever do get to court, believe me, once I’ve told the jury the hell I went through with that maniac and that creep of a kid believe you me, they’ll be on the train to Ossining to tear the bastard’s nuts right off. Then they’ll come back, go out to Mount Zion, and dance on that little asshole’s grave. -I’m not afraid of any New York jury. . . .

Still, she’d told Ellie what little she had to tell, but in the fashion of a gossiping friend. -Her ancient tribulations with a madam who didn’t know a twat from a turnip; the clothes she’d had stolen by a man who envied her style and determined to emulate it in massive drag; the so-called dope dealers who’d embarrassed her with a fake mule trip to the Bahamas…. These matters-and a few others-she chatted about, gesturing violently, her bracelets musical. And occasionally, if Ellie persisted (and bought lunch), Rebecca would relate some oblique tale of plans, of probabilities, of perhapses in criminal endeavor on the Upper East Side. Call girls and their various sorts of johns; odd and angular plots to bring cocaine into the country-none of these very credible, and all laced with revelations of the great: this singer, and what pleased him; that Superior Court Justice, so desperate to be cleaned, powdered, and diapered, once he’d moaned and made poo-poo; and politicians innumerable , local and national, in all their spotted nudity. -These stories, a few true, Rebecca garnered from old friends lonely for a companionable dinner in an uptown restaurant—or from new friends, expensive young prostitutes still exultant in their release from secretarial pools, word processing, school teaching or first marriages, drifting on word of mouth to Rebecca, who took considerable fees in payment for personal and cultural remakes and do-overs of volcanic thoroughness, lasting weeks. Concerts, fine restaurants, museums, classic films at the Modem, elocution, makeup, clothes, aerobics and dance.