CHAPTER 2

Zinnie roared into the driveway. Wherever Zinnie went she was off to a fire. She screeched to a halt, bounded from the car, and stopped dead in her tracks. If there was one thing Zinnie couldn’t take, it was crawly things, and silver-dollar-sized, dark red spiders had been spinning webs from Park Lane South to Myrtle. “Oh, Christ,” she said out loud and ran into the house.

All through the woods and two blocks overflowing on the Richmond Hill side were these doilies five feet and more in diameter. It didn’t help to tear them down. The spiders had their web sites obstinately chosen and, tzaktzak, they’d only build them up again, good as new, right where you’d torn them down. No one had seen the likes of it since the caterpillar blitzkrieg back in 1957. And Zinnie, who wouldn’t bat an eye over a gun-drawn gallop through a subway station at midnight after some fleeing Rastafarians, and that without a backup anywhere in sight, would whimper at the very idea of a bug near her. Once inside, she slammed the kitchen screen door and shivered, safe.

Carmela was setting the table. She was doing it pink and green, in all seriousness, to set off the fillet of sole. Michaelaen, who’d been doing his best to irritate her by driving a matchbox truck in furrows along the tablecloth, stood up on his chair and threw his arms open in mute welcome when he saw Zinnie. She scooped him up and threw him over her head. “Rrrowwll,” she bit the tummied gap between shorts and T-shirt. “Where’s the salt and pepper? This is my dinner right here!” Michaelaen squirmed with delighted horror and rolled his truck into her mouth.

“We’re invaded,” Zinnie announced. “They’re taking over!”

Carmela made “Twilight Zone” noises and Michaelaen watched her with big eyes.

“The spider webs?” Mary didn’t look up from her mushrooms. Peeling mushrooms was one of her peculiarities. Nobody else peeled mushroom tops, but she did.

“They’re something, all right,” agreed Carmela. “Revolting.”

“Your father likes the spiders,” Mary defended them.

“Me, too,” said Michaelaen.

Stan peeked his head in (speak of the devil), wanting to know when dinner would be ready.

“Right after you go wash the sawdust off your face and hands,” Mary poked him out of the doorway. “And you stay off my clean linoleum!”

“I wish he’d go back to Vivaldi,” Carmela shook her head at the retreating mezzo staccato. “At least then we didn’t have to listen to the words.” Wherever Stan went he was locked to an opera.

“Why don’t you use the frigging air conditioner?” Zinnie demanded. They’d all chipped in and bought Mary an air conditioner, but she never used it. “I stopped at Jay Dee’s,” Zinnie changed the subject, holding up a box of coconut custard pie.

“There goes my diet,” Mary moaned.

“I get the string,” Michaelaen shouted. He collected bakery string.

“Where’s Claire?” asked Zinnie.

“Down in the cellar. Assembling her darkroom.”

“Oh.”

“Jay Dee’s?” Carmela asked shrewdly. “Isn’t that the one on Queens Boulevard?”

“Best coconut custard in Queens.” Zinnie turned her back and removed her gun.

“I don’t suppose you ran into anyone?” Carmela continued.

“As a matter of fact I did stop off at Freddy’s, nosy.”

Michaelaen’s ears perked up and he regarded his mother with serpentine quiet.

“And?”

“Sweetheart, be a good boy and go get Grandma some parsley from the garden, would you?”

Michaelaen glared at his grandmother.

“Go ahead,” Zinnie smiled and gave him a hug. “Then I’ll tell you where your dad’s taking you tomorrow. Okay?”

Michaelaen raced outside, a lit-up glider plane. Tomorrow he would see his dad.

“So what did Freddy have to say?” Mary threw nutmeg into her white sauce. “He making out all right?”

Zinnie snatched a major leaf from Carmela’s strategically arranged salad and sat down. “What is this, the centerfold for Gourmet Magazine?” Carmela had bombarded the table with peony branches and distinguished pink roses. Zinnie frowned. “I so hate not being able to see my date.”

“Your date is Michaelaen,” Carmela said. “Now tell about Freddy.”

Zinnie shrugged. “I just thought I’d, you know, go see how they’re coming along with the restaurant.”

“And how’s it coming?” Mary asked.

“I’ll tell ya, it looks really nice. Fancy. You’d love it, Carmela. Veddy veddy art deco.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Yeah. Well … he’s doing so damn well without me. I was kinda hoping … I really don’t know what I was hoping.”

“You tell him about the murder?” Carmela asked.

Zinnie looked from her to her mother and back. “Sure.”

“Don’t give us ‘sure,’” Carmela sneered. “We know all about it. The whole neighborhood knows. It’s all anybody’s talking about.”

“Oh. To tell you the truth, I did talk about the murder with Freddy. Only it was me who did the asking. I wanted to get the gay slant on it.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. Sometimes they know about someone who’s … uh … kooky in that direction. They hear things.”

“And did he?”

“Naw. But he’ll keep his ears open. The last thing he wants is the cops cracking down on all the gays. They’ve got enough trouble with the AIDS scare.”

Mary and Carmela exchanged looks.

Zinnie screwed up her mouth. “Now what?”

“No, nothing,” Carmela busied herself with napkin folding. “Mom was just a little worried about Michaelaen …”

“What, that he’d get AIDS from Freddy?!” Zinnie’s face went red.

“Well, God, Zin. Children do get AIDS, you know. It’s not such a farfetched concern.”

“Look,” Zinnie cried then lowered her voice. “Michaelaen is my son and I’d appreciate it if you’d let me worry about it, all right?”

Claire, coming up the cellar stairs, saw Michaelaen at the back door standing still with a bouquet of parsley, waiting cautiously inside his little shroud of gloom. She slipped out the door.

“Hello,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I was just going to catch myself some lightning bugs.”

Michaelaen regarded her suspiciously through hooded eyes.

“Just to catch. I’ll let them go, of course. I like to hold them in my hand. You?”

He nodded, reluctantly, and followed her onto the darkening grass.

Johnny Benedetto tossed around in his sloppy bed. Perspiration rolled off his body and wet the sheets. He was dreaming of a little boy in holy terror. Johnny flung one fist out desperately; the woods became the streets of Brooklyn and the little boy turned into himself. He entered the crummy building with the peeling wallpaper in the hallway and took the old elevator up. It took so long, then bounced to a stop. He heard someone in the apartment. Voices. Women’s voices wailing. They were in there with his mother. He stood at the open door of the apartment and the women turned to look at him. They stopped crying. “Mom?” he called, looking past their heads. “Mom?” But nobody would let him in. They pulled him down the stairs and brought him somewhere else to wait for his aunt. He didn’t like his aunt, he told them. He wanted his mom. His mom had gone away, they told him, she had gone back to Jesus and he must be brave.… Johnny woke up with a jolt. His breath came short and fast. Trembling, he reached out and felt for the gun on the night stand. It was all right. Just a dream. He was fine.

When dinner was done, Claire hung around the kitchen and helped her mother dry the dishes. Mary was going to hymn mass with the neighbor, Mrs. Dixon. They had been walking to church together for almost twelve years now, and chatting over the hedge whenever they hung wash, and still they called each other “Mrs.”

“Good Lord, it’s muggy,” Mary wiped her brow. “I’d better change this blouse. Smells of fish. I hate that when you stand next to someone in church who’s all smelly.”

“You really like to go to church, don’t you, Mom?”

“I wouldn’t go if I didn’t like it, now, would I?”

“No. You wouldn’t. But a lot of people would.”

Mary slid the Mayor out from in front of the refrigerator with one foot, put the leftovers inside, closed the door, and slid him back to his spot, smack in everybody’s way. It was a wonder that no one ever stepped on him, but nobody did, and he wouldn’t budge on his own. He liked the ride.

“Would it be,” Mary suggested casually, “that you’d like to come along?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Another time, then.” She surveyed the kitchen. Spic and span until the onslaught of night snacking. Claire was over at the sideboard, reaching for the tallest shelf with ease. Claire had the legs in the family. She reminded Mary of her own mother, Jenny Rose. The longest legs and most heathen ideas in all of Skibbereen. If Mary didn’t know better, she’d think Claire was Jenny Rose born twice. Sometimes, when Claire looked at her … ah, silly notions only got you round the bend and back to where you started. You lived and died and if you’d done it well you would get your reward. There was no telling what the Holy Ghost was up to.

“Ma?” Claire steadied the plate she almost dropped, “How do you think something like that can happen? A murder like that?”

Mary closed her eyes and turned her head. Claire had always been the clumsy one. She couldn’t bear to watch her with the good china.

“I mean from the murderer’s side. How can someone live with such guilt?”

Guilt? Interested now, in spite of herself, Mary sat at the white pine table. “If indeed the murderer knows guilt,” she said.

“You mean a schizophrenic?”

“Ah, these labels psychiatrists put on things! Evil was around a long time before they thought up words like that. Words that allow murderers to sit around in hospital gardens and take the sun just as nice as you please. And then back out on the street to kill again.” She straightened her shoulders. “Especially in this city.”

“Yeah, but there must be more to it than that, than simple good and evil.”

“What’s simple? We all are secrets from ourselves.”

Claire sat down, too. She loved it when her mother got like this, all deep and confidential. Irish.

“We trudge along, not being especially good, hoping, anyway, for miracles. Don’t we? And then there are those who, having given up, have given in, regardless of … because of the blind and total lure of evil.”

“Yeah, but how does it start, the madness? When? Is it learned or inherent?”

“Or,” Mary’s face lit up, “is it a living force predestined and allowed to exist by some great power, planted into innocence haphazardly?”

“A plan that has no plan?”

Mary leaned across the table. “Just lessons to be learned,” she whispered. “Battles to be won.”

Claire lit a cigarette. Her mother would be annoyed to know that the gurus preached the same philosophy, almost word for word.

“Oh, give me one,” Mary snapped.

Surprised, Claire gave her hers and lit another.

“Just don’t tell your father.”

The Mayor hopped up and howled. “Oh, drat,” Mary put the cigarette out quickly and waved the air. “That’s Mrs. Dixon. Let her in and I’ll get ready.”

Claire opened the door and in came Mrs. Dixon, short and plump and her hair rinsed blue.

“Now look at this!” she gushed. “The prodigal daughter returned and not a tat the worse for wear! Just as pretty as ever!”

Claire smiled. Mrs. Dixon was so nice that she made you feel not nice. “Mom’ll be right down, Mrs. Dixon. Just went to change her blouse.”

“Let me look at you. My, my!” Mrs. Dixon pulled her apart by the wrists. “You look like a teenager. Those lashes! And your brother’s eyes!” Her own kindly, reminiscent gray orbs twinkled.

Claire’s mouth went dry. She willed her mother to hurry. “Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Dixon, Mom will be—”

“I always wondered about you, Claire … if you were ever coming home. Your mother missed you so. And your dad—”

Mary arrived then, still buttoning up. Claire fled.

“Hello, Mrs. Dixon. Are we late?”

“Plenty of time, plenty of time.”

“Oh, you’ve brought your umbrella! Did they say it would finally rain?”

“It’s for the webs, dear. Fending off the spider webs.”

Michaelaen looked out the upstairs window. He watched Grandma go. Now she was gone. Immediately, he snuck down the hallway and down the back stairs. He made himself into a tight little fellow and scooted out the doggy door. Nobody saw him. He rushed. He crossed Eighty-fifth and went straight up the block till he came to the tree. He sat down on a root two feet high. This tree was three, maybe four hundred years old. Even Grandpa said so. Michaelaen pulled one sturdy leg over and straddled the root. It was warm as himself. He dug swiftly with the shoe horn he’d brought and in a minute he had a pretty good hole. Michaelaen went into his pocket and pulled out the pictures he’d hidden there. Brian. Miguel. And a couple of the other big boys. They were a little sticky from his pocket. He folded them over and put them in the hole, then covered it up good. Just in the nick of time, too, because here came stupid Charlotte, who lived across the street. Probably on her way to the carousel, by herself. Thought she was big. Phhh. It wouldn’t be too good if she saw him, so he’d better go home. She was one little freshie of a tattletale.

Johnny Benedetto lived in a three-over-three house, right on the southeast rim of Aqueduct Racetrack. The sweet smell of horse and manure and hay filled his kitchen all the time. In the summer it was worse. Johnny stood in the dark at the window, drinking Diet Coke, groggily watching through the Venetian blind at the horse they’d put up in the temporary big top, a golden horse whose head was more often out than in. The horse reminded Johnny of himself. She was a real rubberneck—couldn’t stay indoors without watching the street.

There were plenty of housewives on Johnny’s block who’d demonstrated and fought not to have the stables extended so close to their backyards, but that was just how Johnny’d got the house, cheap, from a family whose asthmatic daughter couldn’t stand it. They’d moved out to Valley Stream and Johnny had lucked out. Nobody liked the smell, but what were you gonna do? There was a feeling Johnny got from looking out and seeing that horse there with her head sticking out. He couldn’t understand why his neighbors didn’t feel it, too. Fury. Black Beauty. Flicker. No, there was something all right about having a frigging horse out your window.

Johnny left his Coke can on the back stairs in a pagoda of other Coke cans and locked the back door. The track was all lit up, the fourth race already underway, and the mosquitos were biting. He was very much alive and that little Hispanic boy was dead. Real dead.

“Who do you like in the ninth?” Johnny greeted the horse while he lugged out the garbage. He opened the garage and hopped into the car. The front seat was littered with old papers, outstanding bills, styrofoam cups and one change of a wrinkly wardrobe which sat there like a frazzled passenger. This was Johnny’s office. The engine underneath the hood looked like a gleaming space center and fingerprints on the door were removed fastidiously almost before they got there, but the inside of the car? He wouldn’t know what you were talking about. Johnny turned the key in the ignition, set the air conditioner on full speed, and snapped on the overhead light. He searched the front and back seats thoroughly and eventually came up with the address he needed. When you had nothing to go on, you went with any stupid lead before you wrote it off. The worst feeling was having nothing to do. If you thought about things too much you’d go nuts. And you usually did.

His honor, digesting, watched staunch vegetarian Claire transport shiny bologna on Wonder bread out to the porch. The crickets were singing. Claire balanced a tall glass of milk with her sandwich and a pickle rolled dangerously round the plate as she maneuvered the door with an elbow. One frozen Milky Way protruded from each under arm.

“What?” she looked at him. “You, with your Kosher chicken appetite. You’ve got nothing to say.”

The cat can well look at the queen, thought the Mayor, miffed.

Claire climbed up into the hammock with her goods. The wobbly table was already prepared with an ashtray, a candle, and five Kodak boxes of unopened slides. These were the last days of McLeod Gange and the first color shots from her third day in Queens. Maybe one of them would be brilliant. One would be sufficient. Claire lit the candle to hold each slide in front of. This was not the way it was done, but she had sold her projector and carousel to Sami Ja back in McLeod Gange, the Tibetan village where she’d lived above the Tea Shop of the Tibetan Moon. She was used to doing it this way, now. And Sami Ja was back in the Himalayas making a living showing slides of naked Bagwanis from Poona to the wide-eyed Tibetans. His shows were a raving success. Even the sweet, aproned ladies came. The sight of those earnest, pink-faced yuppies on the road to redemption via nudity delighted them. They laughed and laughed.

Sami Ja was a Tibetan teenager who’d latched on to Claire like a suckling wolf when he’d heard where she came from. “New York?” he’d cried, ecstatic. “Want some hash?” Claire could still see him with his scant Fu Manchu and a lavender jacket that read CBS Sports, front and back. He would pay her to marry him, he’d told her on the day she’d arrived in the village, filthy dirty from the coal truck. “No? And what about a letter to sponsor? Oh, no? Well then, how would she feel about a good down sleeping bag? Brand new! Mountain climber died first day out. Good zipper!”

Claire had bought the sleeping bag. All alone, late at night when the tea shop was closed and the mice scurried joyfully over the icy rafters, she was happy to have her good zipper. Claire would miss Sami Ja. “Another day,” he’d flick his prayer beads over easy, “another dollah.” He would be all right, back there, taking bets from the trekkers, selling forbidden tours of the Dalai Lama’s palace, playing poker with the disenchanted. One day he, too, would know these highlights of American culture that he could now only hear of and dream about: Haagen Daaz. “Dynasty.” That polyester mecca of bliss: Atlantic City. Someday it would all be his.

Claire held the first slide of him up to the light.

There he was, on tiptoes, squinting at the camera from the waterfall. He was thinking maybe this photograph would be seen by some big-shot producer. Claire sighed, remembering the cool, enduring waterfall.

A car came down the block and its headlights lit up the spider web along the rail, turning it silver and exposing wriggling victims caught and now doomed. Claire groaned and looked the other way. It wasn’t the spider that troubled her. Spiders were good luck. This one scrambled over to his favorite, strategic thread and waited for wind and traffic to send him his well-earned dinner. What troubled Claire were those he wouldn’t eat. Grudgingly, she’d have to get up and untangle the ones she felt especially sorry for. She couldn’t help it. She suspected she was only prolonging their inevitable karmic rebirths to a higher form of life, but it was a tricky problem. After all, destiny had placed her in this spot, too, complete with her sucker’s instinct to save the stupid things. The spider would only catch more, so what good would it do? And what was good, anyway? What you meant well very often turned out to be a muddle. Like the time in McLeod Gange when she’d run around trying to get some help for the dying cat. Claire had barely known the cat, but Hula, the proprietress of the tea shop, had pulled the mangy thing off the street for her and her aversion to mice and so she’d felt bound to the thing.

She’d cleaned it up and fed it for a week, but the sickly thing would not get well. It lay at the top of the stairs and wouldn’t move, wouldn’t eat. It just stank. And Claire had picked it up and run around trying to get help for it. Everyone had laughed. Nobody cared about a damn cat. She’d carried the stinking animal into the traffic of Himalayan hubbub and she was going to find him a vet. Of course there was no vet, not even in the Hindu village down below, so she carried it to the healing lama. When she’d finally made it to the lama’s cabin he wasn’t there, he was up in the mountain searching for herbs to roll into pills. The narrow-eyed assistant, thinking himself helpful, had brought out a club, and he was baffled when Claire, in tears, had jogged away down the path with the now-moaning cat. In a panic, Claire had realized that she had to get the poor thing home to the Tea Shop of the Tibetan Moon. Along the way, in the middle of the village, with the prayer wheel going round and round and a session of young monks playing potsy in the road, the cat had thrown back its orange head, stretched its arms and legs in rigid agony, and died.

When things were set to die, Claire knew, one might well provide them with peaceful surroundings in which to do it and not go carting them about like a lunatic, as though it would do any good. She bit into her bologna sandwich. The bread was so fresh that it stuck to the roof of her mouth like a host at communion. And you couldn’t beat sharp mustard. You really couldn’t. Murmuring confusion seeped from the separate television camps the family was divided into around the house. She had the feeling, almost hope and almost fear, that nothing would ever happen again. The milk was ice cold and she drank it greedily. A burst of laughter from inside lit up her face and she smiled with them at some new antic of Michaelaen’s. Or someone’s. It didn’t matter. She was with them, apart but close.

The car that had just passed turned around, hesitated, then stopped right in front of the house. Some sporty little car. A light went on in Iris von Lillienfeld’s back porch and the Mayor crossed over the street. A big man climbed out of the car, studied something in his hand and proceeded up the front walk. Claire leaned forward. It was that—that drug dealer from this afternoon! A thrill of something went right through her.

“This 113-04?” He shielded his eyes from the lantern, then saw her shocked face. Jesus! It was that very same cuckoo from the pizza place!

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she reprimanded him, her tone dating back to a decade of tight-assed, condescending grammar school nuns.

“Look, lady. Before you get all bent out of shape, I didn’t come here to see you!”

Claire dropped the whole box of slides. Lady? How old did he think she was? Had he followed her home?

“Does a Mr. Stanley Breslinsky live here?” he continued, politely bending down to help her pick up the cascade of slides.

“No!” she snatched one right out of his hand. He had wrists thick with enemy black hairs. “You’ve put your fingerprints all over the slide.” She pulled her hair out of her eyes. “Yes, he does live here,” she said, annoyed, in fact, that he hadn’t followed her home.

Married, concluded Johnny, hating her.

“Dad!” called Claire. Now he hated her more.

No one came and the two of them glared at each other. “Dad!” she called again, louder, refusing to get up and give those scornful eyes a good shot at her short shorts.

Stan looked through the front screen. “Oh,” he said, peering out at Johnny. “I didn’t hear the dog.”

“He took off,” Claire complained. “This man would like to speak with you.”

This man, Johnny mimicked her inside his head. Like, “this creep.” “Detective Benedetto,” he said. “I’m with the 102nd. You stopped off there this morning?”

“Yes?” Stan looked around guiltily, then remembered Mary was off to church.

“I wonder if I could have a word with you?”

“Sure!” Stan opened the door and ushered Johnny in. What a hulk of a guy! He slapped him on the back and directed him into his “study,” a room dedicated to one cannon after the next. Wherever you looked there were cannons, homemade crossbows, hunks of wood in various stages of finish. Johnny gave a low whistle. “You make this stuff?” he eyed Stan, impressed.

“What? This?” Stan waved aside the room as though he’d never seen it. “Just a hobby. Old man like me. Got to have something to do now, don’t I?”

Johnny picked up a rosewood and brass miniature of exquisite proportion.

“This is beautiful.”

“That’s the Gustavus Adolphus,” Stan glowed. “Swedish.” If Michael had lived … Stan started to think, till he caught himself.

“God. I’ve never seen work like this. Look at the wheels!”

“You have a good eye. Most people don’t notice detail like that. The wheels happen to have been the most difficult of all. I had to study to be a wheelwright in order to make them. Lots of time, they took, lots of time. We fired one last weekend. That’s why there’s still a little powder burn near the wick.”

“You’re kidding! You mean these things really work?”

“Indeed they do. The cannonballs are in the limber, there.”

Johnny flipped open the miniature lock and opened it. It eased open like a well-oiled treasure box. Not only were there twenty little cannonballs lined up neatly on a polished shelf, but a proper bucket, a mallet, and a pickax as well, all gleaming in rosewood and brass. A delicate white cord with gold-nuggeted ends was waxed, braided, and coiled.

“But you’re an armorer!” Johnny exploded.

Stan was wiping his hands on an old piece of shammy. He looked up through his bushy eyebrows and studied Johnny. “Not many people know what a small-arms expert is, either.”

Fascinated, Johnny turned the smooth wheel of the Rodman. “Yeah, well, there aren’t too many of them around. I got to know one of them in Nam. He was a genius with explosives.”

“Really? That’s what I did in World War II. Demolition. We blew up the swastika of Nürnberg.” He grinned. “Among other things.”

Stan and Johnny gazed at each other with final approval. The record came to an end and Stan hurried over to flip it. “Ah, Puccini,” he sighed.

“Sir?”

“Puccini.”

“Sounds good,” Johnny scratched his forehead, embarrassed.

“So,” Stan sank into his chair, “down to tacks.”

Johnny reminded him of the conflicting numbers he’d reported.

“Oh, yes. You see, my daughter saw this car, and—”

Johnny looked up at Carmela pirouetting into the room. She was wearing a tuxedo and stiletto heels. Her mouth was an indignant fuschia.

“My daughter,” Stan shrugged. “Carmela.”

“Dad, my car won’t start.”

“It’s just the butterfly, knucklehead. It always is.”

“Yes, but I’d rather take yours, if I may.” She looked Johnny over. From the lines of his car she had thought he’d be something. He had good teeth all right, but his Izod La Coste shirt was not a La Coste at all. It was a counterfeit. What’s more, it looked as though it had been slept in. He was obviously ill-bred. Didn’t even stand up. Stan fished in his pocket for keys and handed them over. “Be careful,” he warned and she started to leave.

“You the one who saw the car?” Johnny stopped her.

Carmela gripped her chest. “Me? Of course not. That was Claire.”

“That’s my other daughter … on the porch.”

“Yes, she lives on the porch,” Carmela smiled.

“Oh, she doesn’t live on the porch. Sometimes she sleeps out there.”

“Every night since she’s come home.”

“You see, Claire’s been living overseas—”

“Over a tea shop. In the Himalayas.”

“Yes. Well. She’s not used to being back in civilization yet. And she … she saw this car early in the morning but she thought it would be better if I went down and told about it.”

Johnny’s shoulder’s sank. “I’m afraid I’ll have to speak to her then.”

“Oh, no!” they both said.

Johnny looked at them.

Carmela untangled her bow tie and pulled it up into her hair. “You see, Claire has this thing about policemen.”

“She won’t talk to you,” Stan agreed. “I mean, she’d rather not.”

A gigantic funeral arrangement came in on a pair of men’s legs.

“Freddy!” Carmela cried. “Gladiola!”

Freddy struggled in and lowered the flowers onto Stan’s cluttered desk. He was dressed a la Miami Vice and his hair was shaved stylishly over his ears with a brilliantined dip in the front. “From the restaurant.” His lips pursed of their own accord. “I’ve got so many I don’t know what to do with them all. I’ll bring more by tomorrow when I come to pick up Michaelaen.”

He’s a fruit, thought Johnny.

“Daddy!” Michaelaen, so happy that he had to act mad, marched into the room and butted his head into his father’s designer-jeaned leg.

“Where’s your mother?” Freddy hugged him. “Go tell her I’m here.”

“This is Frederick Schmidt,” Stan introduced him to Johnny. “Detective Bene …”

“Benedetto,” Johnny finished for him, stretching out his hand, remembering AIDS. Daddy?

Uh-oh, thought Freddy and he put up his guard.

“Schmidt? Freddy Schmidt?” Johnny repeated out loud. “You didn’t used to quarterback for Holy Cross?”

“That was me,” Freddy grinned, resigned now to the look of shock, disgust, and pity that was sure to cross Johnny’s face. But it didn’t come. At least he has that much class, Freddy thought. “How’s the writing coming, Carmela? Won any Pulitzers yet?”

Carmela threw herself across the ripped leather sofa and flung one arm behind her head. “If I don’t get some dirt on someone fast, I might very well be forced to go back to writing novels.” She exhaled an elaborate swoon.

“Not that you ever finished one of those,” said Zinnie as she walked in and gave Freddy a kiss on the cheek. “You look good,” she told him generously. “Hi,” she reached over and gave a hand to Johnny.

“Detective Benedetto, meet Officer Breslinsky,” Stan said proudly. He wished Freddy wouldn’t sit like that, so close to the Dahlgren. You never knew when that one would fire. There were still some kinks in it that he would have to work out.

Freddy obligingly stood up and walked over to the bar. “Drink?” he asked no one in particular and helped himself to a Frangelica.

“Officer, huh? Where do you work?”

“Midtown South. Anticrime.”

“Nice house. Who’s your hook?”

“My brother was on the job.” Zinnie suddenly began to search for fleas in Michaelaen’s spanking clean mop of hair.

“No kidding? How long you been on?”

“Three years,” Zinnie smiled.

Nice kid, Johnny thought.

“You want to talk to Claire?” She accepted the bourbon and water Freddy handed her.

“Seems to be a problem.”

Zinnie kicked her head to one side. “Leave it to me. C’mon.” She led Johnny back out to the porch where Claire was on hands and knees under the hammock, carefully retrieving the last of the slides.

“Man wants to talk to you,” Zinnie took a long swig of her drink and smacked her lips.

Claire looked up at her. They traded telepathic messages, the final one being Zinnie’s no-nonsense reminder that this was a murder here, not a parking ticket. Claire wobbled to her feet. Johnny just stood there, looking. And he was nice and comfortable in his own skin, a thing she rarely was. He made her feel … unreal. She cleared her throat.

Johnny leaned on the railing. Claire grasped his arm with both hands and transported him a few feet to the left. “You were backing into the spider’s web,” she mumbled.

“Thank you,” he said, misunderstanding her concern for the spider as concern for him.

They were both going to be civil.

“You take pictures?”

“Mostly just old people up in the park.”

“My sister shoots Jews.” Zinnie curtsied and left.

“Now about this car …”

Claire put the slides down. “I woke up for no reason. Maybe the sun woke me up. Or the Mayor.”

“The dog.”

“Yes, the dog. And a big, old gold Plymouth was coming down from the park, see, right down there …”

Plymouth. He was writing this down. He wasn’t going to let her catch him looking at those legs.

“Plymuth?” she frowned at his notes. “So you can’t spell.”

“No,” he feigned nonchalance, “I can’t spell.”

“Uh … anyway, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I didn’t see who was in the car. But it was a man. A medium-build man. Not dark, really. I was looking at the license number and thinking that it was Buddha’s year. It distracted me. And then I went back to sleep.”

“Buddha?”

“Yes.”

Johnny clicked his eyes into place. Was she kidding?

“And those are the two sets of numbers your father gave the desk clerk?”

“563 or 473. Yes.”

“And you don’t know which?”

“No, I really don’t,” she answered cooly. “The year of ascension or of birth. They’re the only two I know. I tend to think it was 473. I feel more comfortable with that number.”

Freddy, Zinnie, and Carmela came out the front door together, toodle-ooed and off they went in their separate directions. Johnny watched Claire distribute her goodbyes. She really thought who the hell she was, didn’t she? Buddha. Himalayas. Spelling.

She turned to him with puppy dog eyes. “Then you weren’t with those playboys out in front of the pizza place?”

“No. Look, would you come with me down—”

“I don’t date policemen,” she interrupted him.

Johnny laughed. “I wasn’t asking you out on a date. I was asking you to come down to the precinct and look at some mug shots.”

“Mug shots?” Claire felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “But I never saw anybody!”

“Miss Breslinsky, you told me you had the impression of a man. Maybe you could look at some pictures and just eliminate … just give us an idea what kind of—”

“But I didn’t see anybody! I have no idea who was in that car!”

He snapped his notebook shut. “Right. Thank you very much for your help, Miss Breslinsky.”

“You need not use sarcasm, detective. I really can’t help you.”

“No,” Johnny narrowed his eyes and spoke directly to her ankles. “You really can’t.” He started to take his dramatic leave but was stopped in his tracks by the sight of two stocky ladies trotting up the street with matching whale-sized handbags flailing. One of them, Errol Flynn, had taken the lead and was fencing the air with a turquoise umbrella.

“My mother,” Claire explained.

“Whoosh,” Mrs. Dixon dashed ahead of Mrs. Breslinsky up to the porch. “It’s like a jungle!”

Mrs. Breslinsky, breathing swiftly, sank onto the top step.

“Aha! Another!” Mrs. Dixon broke lance with the web on the railing.

“Now why did you have to do that?” Claire asked her.

“Well, now, what do you mean, dear?” She wiped her umbrella with a hanky. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

Mary’s eyes blazed. “We got a good ten of them on the way home. Well, Mrs. Dixon did. Good evening, young man.”

“Mother, this is Detective Benedetto. Detective, my mother, Mary Breslinsky, and Mrs. Dixon.”

“Are you coming inside?” Mary smiled hopefully at him. “It’s cooler in there. Didn’t anyone offer you a lemonade? Or a Coke?”

“I was just taking off,” Johnny thanked her.

Claire looked over at the von Lillienfeld house. Now there were no lights on.

“Isn’t it a grand evening?” Mary sighed. “So tropical!”

Claire watched her Milky Ways ooze into neatly wrapped puddles. Grand evening? What was she talking about? It was so sweltering that she could feel her head begin to ache. It was awful. Why didn’t he leave?

“Hello,” said Michaelaen from inside.

“What? Still up? Come give your old grandma a kiss.”

Michaelaen slid out the door and sidled up to his grandma. His mouth was full of cherry cough drops. Michaelaen loved those cherry cough drops.

“Who are you?” he said to Johnny.

“Just a cop,” Johnny looked into Claire’s blue eyes.

That did it. She got up and went inside.

The Siamese named Lü who owned Miss von Lillienfeld crept under cover of night to the spot in the pine where the murder had happened. He didn’t walk right on the spot but circled, eyes capable and cunning in the dark. Nothing moved. He went with a sorcerer’s stealth, watching this way and that, but the spirit was gone. Lü the cat beat a swift retreat. It was not the dead one must fear but the living.

The Mayor stood beneath the lantern on White Hill. He watched Lü leave the woods and safely cross old Park Lane South. Lü still moved well for his age. He didn’t have the Mayor’s paunch or grizzled knees. Lü didn’t bother to glance over. He didn’t have the Mayor’s breeding, either, for all his certificates of parentage, and took all displays of concern as signs of weakness. A regular Frankie bachelor. On separate sides of the street, they both tobogganed home.