CHAPTER 12

Mary sat in her chair and looked down at the floor. That was the next thing. A really good scrubbing for that linoleum. Not today, though. And she wasn’t going to ask one of the kids. If they couldn’t think of it on their own, they could live with it the way it was. That was one thing she just wouldn’t do. She remembered her own mother sitting at the same table, probably the very same chair, saying nothing, looking out the window while her husband ranted and raved at the kids. His fine Irish tongue run to drivel with drink and the florid injustices that went with it. He would aim it at the children, at her brothers and sisters and herself. Sure, weren’t they the only ones who didn’t know better than to take it? Do this, Mary. Go on off, now and do that, Mary. Isn’t that tea up yet, girl? Oh, she could still hear him as clear as a bell. Well she wasn’t going to have her children remembering their parents for that sort of nilly. Row upon row of upright tulips in the garden, all straight in rows, and never a child allowed near enough to God forbid enjoy them. No. Mary took a noisy, bitter slurp of her coffee. It might be noisy, chaotic memories her kids would have, but they would be gentle and permissive. Yes, that would always be the better way. She’d decided that as a young girl and she wouldn’t change that.

Stan came in and sat down. “You wanna sit here all day or you wanna come with me?”

“I was just thinking … remembering. How rigid my own dad was. How we never really knew him. We were afraid of him if anything. ‘Dad’s comin’!’ we used to hiss at each other. Like, the monster’s comin’ … or something. You’d think he would have wanted us to love him, wouldn’t you?”

“’Cause if you want to stay here, I can go drop off the Lotto and come back and get you.”

“A man as intelligent as he was … you’d think he would have known better. Phh. Artist! Artist in false pride is what he was. With seven children and too good to take honest labor of any kind! And my own poor mother swallowin’ the bile and goin’, with her head held high, mind, to his own mother just to get money to pay the bloody milkman … it was … it was disgustin’!”

“Mary. Come with me now and stop sittin here thinking. The next’ll be the memories of snow and your mother and when she died and before you can say Jack Robinson you’ll be wanting me to take you over to the cemetery and on the way stop off at the florist.”

“It’s Claire I’ve been thinking about, really. When she was small there wasn’t any of this soul-searching stuff. She was a normal, happy little girl, wasn’t she? A real Ann of Green Gables. She wasn’t the one you would think would get mixed up in all this mumbo jumbo. And it wasn’t Michael’s death that got her started, either. No, it was something else. Like when she started hanging around down in Greenwich Village after school. Rolling up her uniform above her knees and hitching to the city to go listen to drop-out musicians. That was when she started with all this metaphysical bunk. Remember the palmistry? All those books out of the library! The Manhattan library, too. And now them coming looking for her pictures in the cellar. I knew that darkroom was a bad idea.”

“Now what’s one thing got to do with the other?”

“Maybe I should have been more stern. I shouldn’t have been so trusting.”

“You wanted me to remind you about the meat.”

“Oh, yikes, that’s right! I’ve got that top round I have to get out of the freezer. You do that for me, will you, dear? And I’ll put some lipstick on. The garage freezer.”

“Mary?”

“What?”

“What’s Claire going to do about that camera Johnny Benedetto gave her?”

“Stanley Breslinsky. That’s her own decision now, isn’t it? And I won’t have you influencing her, one way or the other.” Mary rubbed the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex and grinned into her grubby compact.

Stan shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He could just make out the tops of her garters under her skirt. It was the big soft cotton skirt with the pineapples on it.

“And,” she dotted each cheek with a smudge from her lipstick and savagely patted, “you’d better start thinkin’ about what you’re going to do about the old camera … whether you’ll be givin’ it to Claire or not.”

“That again.”

“Yes, that again. What’re you savin’ it for? To leave her after you’re dead and gone?”

“To be sure. She won’t be getting much else.”

“Stop jokin’ around, Stan. Now, I mean it.” There was a quarter of a cup left of her coffee and she finished it off with a healthy last draft. “She could use it now. She couldn’t be in more of a crisis. She’ll wind up takin’ this fellow’s camera just to get back in the race.”

“He’s the best man any of them’s brought home yet.”

“I know. But you don’t know, really. You never can tell. Wasn’t it you urging Zinnie to marry Fred? It was. I know Claire has ethics. Too many, maybe. But if life forces her hand, there’s no tellin’ what could happen. She might go with him just to justify accepting the gift, like.”

“She’d be right to do it.”

“That’s just the point, Stan. It’s not to be your decision. It’s hers. And if she has her own camera she won’t need anything from him. She’ll be free to judge him for love’s sake.”

Stan looked at his nails stubbornly. “If I pushed Zinnie at all, it didn’t turn out so badly. You got Michaelaen didn’t you?”

“Got Michaelaen! Like he was some raffle prize and me with the right ticket! Sure I’d give him up in a flash if he could have a normal life with a mom and a dad just like every other child, I would! You’re hot stuff, you are. Well, maybe not. Not in a flash. Oh, will you give the dog some of your bread and butter?”

“I’m not eating any.”

“Well, you’re standing right alongside of it! Just give it to him, will you? He’s driving me crazy.”

“He shouldn’t have butter.”

“Neither should you.”

“Especially not in this heat. I ought to bring him along to the vet’s one of these days. He’s long due. You like that, wouldn’t you, boy? A nice trip to the fine doctor?”

Like fish, thought the Mayor.

Mary stood up decisively and smoothed her skirt. “So when are you going to give Claire that old camera of yours? I mean, if you want to.”

Stan was spreading butter back and forth, back and forth. It couldn’t get any softer. The Mayor sat patiently down on the cool linoleum.

“Michaelaen still upstairs?” Mary, her germ planted, changed the subject.

“He’s shaving. I gave him a shaver with no razor and he’s up there scraping shaving foam off his face.”

They both were quiet then. They could hear the rabbits outside shuffling in their cages. Stan lit up his pipe.

“I know you’re thinking hard,” said Mary. “If you don’t stop puffing you’ll disappear. And you know it’s not the smoker who necessarily gets the emphysema. It’s the one sitting across the table.”

Stan, momentarily invisible inside his cloud of smoke, was dreaming of his latest project, a miniature carousel. Not quite the work of art up in the park, perhaps. Let’s face it, he was no brilliant woodcarver like Muller, who created the original merry-go-round, but he did have his own small flair for things. He could have it finished for Christmas if he hurried. He looked over at his wife. Whenever Mary looked this pretty, Stan worried, it usually meant that her blood pressure was up. “I’ll go on and get that meat,” he said.

Mary and the Mayor watched him with equal expressions of irritation. First he had to choose his tape and attach his earphones. To someone as nimble and quick as Mary, this could take an inordinate amount of time. This morning she chose not to notice. She raised her eyebrows and kept them raised and turned her back. Chopin. Chopin meant the rain would go on and on. Tch. She’d have to go back upstairs and change her shoes. The Mayor sadly noted the first high strains of Chopin as a continuation to his long-standing bout with arthritis. It never failed. He was really starting to take a dislike to this particular composer. This weather took the starch right out of you. Then again, it was always better to know in advance, wasn’t it? You didn’t want to find yourself too far from home when it started to rain. One thing he could never figure out, though, was whether Stan played Chopin because it was going to rain or if it rained because Stan played Chopin.

Claire slept late. As long as it rained she was deep in the eyes of blue Morpheus, and the minute it stopped so did she. One eye was crumpled shut, the other telescoped the dim attic, not yet sure just where she was. It rested on the note propped on her dresser, bold and yellow, scrawled in Carmela’s dynamic script. “Here’s the address,” it read, “you can pick it up after eleven.”

Right. The car. Oh, hell. It felt pretty late. There went all hope of a ride. Where was this garage, anyway? She got out of bed and scrutinized the note. Kew Gardens. Up on Queens Boulevard. That would be the Q37 bus. She looked in the mirror. Why did the corners of her mouth hang down like that? Final, inevitable gravity, that was why. So this was it, eh? Or had the alcohol done it? The lot had done it. She might as well accept it. No mirror round the world had ever treated her so bluntly. All right, fine, she’d jog up there. There was no shame in aging. Or she’d walk. Yes, walking would be far more sensible. She could just see herself having a heart attack if she overdid it. An aspirin wasn’t a bad idea, either. Her face would go on her just when she needed it. Just when she was falling in—oh, rubbish! She wasn’t falling in anything. More likely she just wished she was in love to justify accepting the camera. Well, she wasn’t going to let her panic go turning her into a prostitute, for God’s sake. If she had been going to prostitute herself she could have done it long ago and over a lot more than a frigging camera. She blew her nose. She had to do something about her hair. She twirled one strand around her finger and held it up to the milky light. Old Iris still remembered her as a redhead. At least someone did. But really, if you held it a certain way it did still have sort of a glint. Sort of. Hmm. Maybe a rinse? Tch. American television! It made you want to be glamorous. She must stop watching it.

The geranium on the sill caught her interest. She loved them like this, with no real flowers to speak of but the blossoms ready to open. The color was wonderful then, very rich and true. All of it yet to come. Of course, it was possible that Iris hadn’t been referring to her own hair at all … couldn’t she have meant someone else? Someone else watching the house? A redheaded murderer? Why not? Claire regarded herself in the mirror and lit a cigarette. Christ. That fellow over at Holy Child, the one who’d been outside when they’d brought out the white casket, he’d had red hair. Even Freddy’s lover, that bartender, was a redhead. What would he be doing snooping around here? Jealous of Zinnie? Good Lord. And that kid in front of the church, couldn’t he have been the one to go after her cameras? Wouldn’t he have reason to think she’d taken his picture? He’d certainly walked right into her frame. Only he had no way of knowing that she hadn’t taken any shots. That would explain why he couldn’t find the picture of himself … because there’d never been one. Oh, she should call someone. She must do that right away. Really, it was astonishing that they’d left her all alone here! If this were a film, the murderer would be under the porch already. Or in the closet. He might very well be in the closet. Or she. Claire felt the droplets of sweat breaking out on her scalp. Perhaps she really was over the deep end, as Johnny had suggested. Maybe she was the murderer herself? A true schizophrenic. Like The Three Faces of Eve! She sucked in her breath. She must be mad. What she needed was an English muffin. Cautiously, she left the room. There, on the landing, stretched puppy style with arms and legs flat out alongside himself, the Mayor stuck out his pink tongue in glad tidings. He had only just come out here in hopes of a draft.

“Well, hello there, cookie,” her breathing relaxed. “Good to see you.”

Down the stairs they shuffled, as close as they could get without tripping over each other. “On the other hand,” Claire continued her train of thought out loud, “just because he had red hair doesn’t make him a murderer. And just because he happened to be at church that time could have been mere coincidence.” The redhead Iris referred to could have been an old woman’s poor vision. Or suspicion thrown on someone else on purpose. Really, it was a nightmare. Halfway down, the doorbell chimed. “Now who,” demanded Claire, “Is that?”

The Mayor bellowed roundly and tripped his reassuring, if no longer graceful, mazurka. The six alerted spiders on the mildewed walls adjusted their positions, and there was, just as she’d feared, nobody at the door.

Electrified, she stood stock still. There was no sound besides the Mayor’s wheezing pant. The back door! She had to get to it before whoever was out there did. With breakneck speed she hurled herself across the hallway, through the kitchen, grabbing a knife from the gourmet countertop block of six along the way and onto the door she flew. It was locked. She stood there, her spine pressed against the wood, her kitchen knife one calla lily in her whitened hand. The Mayor watched with patent leather eyes. She was having, he presumed, what was known as a nervous breakdown.

“Hullo!” came a voice from the driveway through the creepers. “Anybody home?”

It was Mrs. Dixon.

“Hi,” Claire answered back as cheerfully as she could.

“You all right in there?”

“Yes! Yes, fine. Just having breakfast.” Even in her dither she knew enough not to add a “care to join me.” The woman, once in, would never leave. She didn’t mind feeling silly as much as she minded being bored out of her mind.

“Your mom asked me to look in on you,” Mrs. Dixon explained. “They’ve got their bowling meet today, you know. The big one.”

“Ah!”

“The end of summer tournament.”

“Right. How could I have forgotten?”

“And you know your mom. She didn’t like to go off and leave you, what with all the shenanigans going on …”

“Gee, you shouldn’t have bothered. I’m fine.”

Mrs. Dixon looked hurt.

“I really do appreciate your stopping off, though.”

Mrs. Dixon shielded her eyes from the sun. “Perhaps you’re not alone?”

Nosy old biddy, thought Claire. “Well, I do have the Mayor here. Ha, ha.” They laughed together through the screen.

“Well then. I’ll be on my way …”

“I’m just leaving, too,” Claire assured her.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Claire watched her sturdy frame in sturdy summer shoes retreat through the yard and past the rabbits. “Five minutes with a woman like that,” Claire said to the Mayor, “reinforces one’s belief in making hay while the sun shines.”

The Mayor grinned.

“Now listen. I’m going to take my shower and get going up to Kew Gardens or Forest Hills or wherever this garage is. I know you’re going to be annoyed at me but you can’t come with me this time. Now don’t look at me like that. Someone’s got to stay and watch the house.”

Certainly, thought the Mayor. But he could do it just as well from across the street at Natasha’s.

“You remember what happened last time,” she poked him in his tender, portly ribs. “Oh, come on. Don’t look like that. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

But four-thirty found her sitting slumped and even somewhat content over some fabulous white coffee and a peach-kiwi tart. She was up in the Gardens, right across the square from the Forest Hills Inn. It was as green and lush as only old money could make it. Ivy climbed white trellises and mauve stucco walls encased old lead paned windows. The cobblestone road encircled a caretaker’s island. On one side were the steep yellow steps of the Long Island Railroad Station and on the other the sleepy Tudor shops. You really thought you were in Nymphenbürg or Bogenhausen.

Claire gazed morosely into her empty cup. The last time she’d had a cappuccino had been with Johnny, down in Sheepshead Bay. “What is it you’re looking for?” he’d asked her. Kindly he’d said it, but directly, grazing her fingertips with his own the minute Red had left the table. He’d caught her off guard. “Plenty,” she’d said just for something to say. “Oh,” he’d sighed. “You see, with me it’s different. I don’t want too much. Just a boring, old-fashioned life if I can swing it. Like a family,” he’d sniffed casually. “But then I don’t have the kind of opportunities in life like you’ve got.”

“No,” she’d grinned back at him, tit for tat, “I guess you don’t.” What a pompous ass she’d been. He’d been trying to be straight with her and all she could give him was a snippy answer like that. How much time she’d wasted worrying that he was just a cop when she should have been wondering if she were good enough for him. And now it was probably too late. “Quite honestly, your majesty,” she addressed her higher power, “if you give me another chance here, I’ll do my best to live up to it.” She thought of the pile of laundry on Johnny’s porch floor. “On the other hand,” she added, “if you’re saving me for something else, well, you certainly know best.” Claire eyed her watch suspiciously. She’d parked the car over on Austin Street, the only place to park around here, and she’d been happy to find that, even if it was a meter. If they caught you parking in here, not only would they tow you, but they’d plaster your car windows with impossible-to-remove rebukes. Claire took a bite of the buttery-crusted tart. This was so good that she was going to have to have another. The rain-drenched vines hanging down the arcade shimmered prettily with sunlight and the start of a breeze. When she got herself a camera she was going to come back and photograph those houses along there toward the tennis club. Where the little red Porsche was coming down the lane. Good Heavens! That was Stefan! “Hello! Yoo-hoo! Hello!” she stood up tall and flagged him down. He didn’t see her at first, but he had to come around the island to turn and then he did see her, guffawed right away, pulled the car right up to the café (gliding right through the red light) and hopped out without opening a door. He was wearing (what else?) his tennis whites.

“Now this is a pleasure,” he shook her hand warmly and kissed her cheek. “May I join you?”

“Yes, of course. I was just sitting here dreaming.”

“It is a delightful spot. Especially in this chaleur!”

Claire scurried her ice-cream chair over to make room for him. Vanished were the eerie feelings she’d had about him in the dark. He was so clean, the way the rich so often were. Right out of the locker room shower. A dental cleaning and gum massage every seven weeks. Ensembles that wouldn’t dare pill. For one enraptured moment Claire saw herself waking up in a sunlit room in Stefan’s house. She was swaddled in cashmere. A breakfast tray was on her lap. An Ida Lupino telephone jingled.

“Claire?”

“Huh?”

“I just asked you if you’d like another tart.”

“Oh. Me? I couldn’t! One of those is plenty. You go ahead.”

When the waiter left with Stefan’s order, Stefan whisked a dove gray suede packet onto the table. Out came a spotless mirror rimmed in jade and a cloisonné box. With all the finesse of a surgeon he poured out a perfect little mountain and divvied it up into several neat rows. Then he handed her a sterling silver straw. She shook her head no. He sniffed two lines up with wild, professional snorts and winked at her as he returned the paraphernalia to its purse.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” he said. “It doesn’t become you.”

“It’s my dreams that don’t become me, Stefan. And now that I think about it, they do tend to be becoming too much like perfume commercials. I keep telling myself I have to stop watching television but I just go on watching it. Maybe this will teach me. There are worse things than laundry after all.”

“I don’t get it. You’re just too quick for me.”

“I doubt that. You’re way ahead of everyone.” She sighed. “It’s me. I still expect other people to step in and change my life.”

“If you’d give me half a chance …”

“I mean like with a magic wand or … or …”

“Or what?”

“Stefan? Don’t turn around now but do you see that guy over—no, don’t turn around, I said!”

“Well, where then?”

“Just hang on. Because I think he’s going over to the railroad steps. And then you won’t have to turn.”

“The one with the red hair? With the crossword puzzle book?”

“That’s him. That’s the one. Is he following me, do you think?”

“A bit young for you, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m serious, Stefan. I keep running into him.”

“Well, you keep running into me, too. And I can assure you, you’re not following me.”

“Y’know Stefan, you’re so frigging glib. You’re really starting to make me sick. You act like I have no right to think someone might be following me. As though nothing horrible had happened to me. I mean, someone might want me dead. Actually dead and all you do—”

“I know where I know him from! Here let me light that for you. He’s the bartender at Freddy’s.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. And I ought to know. I’ve tipped him enough.”

“This is really weird. He’s the same guy I saw outside the church at the funeral of the first victim.”

“Are you sure?”

“I looked right at him through my lens. I remember like it was yesterday because he started to come toward me and I thought he was a relative of the dead kid and was going to ask me not to take any more pictures. Because he couldn’t have known that I hadn’t taken any to begin with.…”

Enthralled with each other’s news, they turned together to look directly at their subject. He was sprawled on the steps, eyes closed, his upturned face inhaling the late yellow sun. Any American tourist collapsed upon the Spanish Steps in Rome. His crossword puzzle book lay open on his lap.

“And you want to know the best part of all?”

“What?”

“He’s Freddy’s boyfriend.”

“Freddy’s gay?!”

“Well, bi. He’s also my brother-in-law. Or was.”

“Now let me get this straight …”

“No, Stefan, it’s all too complicated right now. Call the police.”

“The what? The police? Why? Because someone you saw in two different places turns out to be the same person?”

Claire gnawed at her thumb cuticle. “Of course, you’re right. Maybe I’m losing my marbles. Maybe Richmond Hill was the wrong idea for me altogether. Except that Iris mentioned a redhead spying on me. Well, she didn’t say that exactly, but that’s what she meant. I’m sure of it. Jesus. You try and get your life together and you do everything you can to do the right thing and then there are so many things that can go wrong. Not can. Do. That just do go wrong, you know? I know I shouldn’t be thinking of life that way but there you go, I was born a pessimist. And an optimist. Back and forth, back and forth, my worlds play off each other. And always back to a guaranteed certainty that whatever can go wrong, will. A Murphy’s lawyer, as it were. And then my childlike, superstitious, olley olley oxen free, if furtive, belief that if I keep that elephant trunk facing the doorway there … or if I pray from Grandma Maheggany’s funeral parlor holy picture … or if the clouds up there are mackerel … then today will go well. You see what I mean?”

“Now Claire. Calm down.”

“Oh, you don’t get what I mean at all, do you? You and I might as well live on different planets. It’s not just Park Lane South that separates our worlds. And another thing. Have you noticed that there isn’t one single spider’s web up here? Or anywhere near Metropolitan? But they’re all over my neighborhood. Why?”

“Spiders?”

“I’ll tell you why. Because there’s something sinister approaching my family. I can feel it.”

“I think you need a drink.”

“You mean you think you need a drink.”

He watched her warily. She was teetering toward the edge. He was wondering how he could remove himself without risking a scene. Fortunately, Claire seemed to be getting ready to go herself. She pulled a ten dollar bill out, slipped it under her saucer, and snapped her wallet shut.

“That should take care of it,” she said.

“Please, let me invite you,” he said, magnanimous with relief.

“Thank you, no.”

“Well, then take back five. A cup of coffee and a tart are not ten dollars.”

“I’ve had two tarts and two coffees,” Claire sniffed with dignity.

“Ah,” said Stefan, not knowing what else to say.

“My meter,” Claire stood.

“Marvelous running into you,” he gave her his most radiant smile and she wiggled her fingers at him.

Creep, thought Claire.

Bitch, thought Stefan.

The redhead across the way scissored his lips between two fingers and wondered, What’s a four-letter word for contradict?

By the time she got home the breeze had turned to wind and the Mayor lay in the middle of it out on the lawn. This is the beginning of the end, is what he thought. It won’t get any more summery after this. It will only get less. Before you could run around the johnny pump autumn would be close enough to bite you. That was the thing about summer. It started up slow, taking its fine time getting established, and then once it was there and you just figured out how to cope with it, it would hurry along all willy-nilly right before your very eyes. Rather, he pondered, like life.

Claire commandeered the boat of a car into the drive and pulled it up alongside the house, the way she’d seen Carmela do it. She got a little too close though, and had to disembark on the passenger side. Sliding over, she felt something sticky under her fingers. “Yuck!” she said out loud. It was Freddy’s blood. She spit on her hanky then changed her mind and went into the glove compartment to find some tissues. They were crumpled but she used them, scrubbing with short, disgusted strokes. When she raised the vinyl backrest a crack to get the rest clean, she noticed something in there glitter. Sure enough, it was some sort of gadget—no, it was a cufflink. A cufflink in the shape of a roulette wheel! The Erie Lackawanna freight train roared through the neighborhood, obliterating everything but the green, green leaves on the trees.

Claire sank to the ground beside the Mayor. Her fingers, he noticed when she touched him, were clammy and trembling. “What does it mean?” she asked him, burying her face in his fur. “What on earth does it mean?” She didn’t want to go on into the house just yet. She had to think. It meant, she supposed, one of two things: Carmela or Freddy. Carmela was out. She might not be in her right mind but she was not crazy. At least not that crazy. Was she? Good Lord, of course not. Claire remembered Carmela as a very little girl. She would wheel Michael and herself around the neighborhood in their broken-down stroller. She’d hated them fiercely but she’d kept a good eye on them. It could never have been Carmela. Freddy. Claire put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes around and around. Who knew what he was capable of. She was going to have to tell Zinnie about this. The Mayor barked. She opened her eyes. There was Johnny Benedetto looking at her from his car. He was pulled up on the wrong side of the road, one fine dark arm crooked handsomely out the window.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Still hanging out with your rich friend?”

“Oh, boy. I’m not in the mood for this.”

Johnny made a sour, disgruntled face and pretended he was feeling his chin for stubble. He wasn’t always, she noticed, the handsomest of dons. It didn’t make her like him less, it made her like him more. At least he wasn’t continually intimidating. He could be occasionally vulnerable.

“I like you a lot better,” she said. “You’re more my type.”

“Oh, yeah?”

With that one shot of honesty he seemed to return to his complacent, obnoxious self.

“And now I’m very sorry I told you that,” she told him, annoyed.

“Yeah, well, that’s you all the way: give an inch and take back a yard.”

“Am I? Am I really like that?”

“I don’t know. Are you? What do you do, piece together who you are with your lover’s odd remarks?”

“Jesus, I don’t know.” She patted the Mayor’s head. “Are you my lover?”

“I’d like to be.”

She looked up at him. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Tell.”

“I found this stuck in Carmela’s car seat.” She handed it to him. “And don’t go thinking it must be Carmela, because I happen to know that it couldn’t be. So forget about it. But she’s been seeing—”

“Fred Schmidt.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Those two have been painting the town. And they’re pretty stupid if they think they’re being sneaky. Then they’ve got that cabbage following them around everywhere they go. He sticks out like a sore thumb, with that red hair.”

Claire stared at him. “Who?”

“The jealous boyfriend.”

“Carmela has another boyfriend?”

“No. Freddy does. The one who’s always hanging around here. Looking in the windows in the middle of the night. At first I thought he was spying on Zinnie. Then I figured out it was Carmela he had a case on. The jealous bartender. You must have seen him.”

“Now I know who Iris von Lillienfeld was talking about.”

Out the window came old “Sally Go Round the Roses.” That meant Zinnie was home. All the more reason not to go in.

“You know I’ve got to take this over to the station house, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“You want to come?”

“No.” Not only didn’t she want to, but the wet grass had turned her backside into a dark, round embarrassment. “I’m going to change. Do you want to come back and eat here?”

He grabbed her wrist and turned it over to look at her palm. “There’s this house up on Eighty-fourth Avenue for sale. I don’t know. You’re not thinking of leaving town or anything, are you?”

“Am I supposed to answer as a suspect or a potential girlfriend?”

“It’s got a front porch with screens. And a fireplace.”

“Johnny, anything on Eighty-fourth is going to be outrageously expensive,” she heard herself conspire.

“Yeah, but this is a real wreck. Pretty, though. That’s why I thought of you, like.” He coughed gruffly. “It needs a lot of work on the inside. But I figured you’d like an old kitchen from the forties.”

It was, as a matter of fact, the only sort of kitchen she did like.

“And the outside looks kind of like a Swiss chalet. I mean it could. It has a real low overhang. And I’m pretty good with my hands. Really.”

They searched each other’s eyes excitedly.

“It’s on a nice little piece of property, too. If I got a good price for my house. And I might. It’s right on the track.”

She couldn’t believe she was standing there discussing buying a house in Richmond Hill with Johnny Benedetto. Nor had she forgotten his nearness to the track. “Johnny,” she laughed. “Aren’t we jumping the gun a little here?”

“No. We’re drawn to each other. That’s not going to change.” He let go of her hand. “Just keep it in mind.”

She shook her head with an adult flourish.

“You and I,” he looked her up and down, “we haven’t even gotten started.”

“Johnny, we don’t even know if we really like each other, do we?”

“Claire. You and I, we know we like each other. Really.”

Stan, at the window, pulling Mary’s favorite red leaf around in the lettuce dryer, saw the two of them out there with their heads together. Now or never, he decided, and he went outside.

“And something else you might like to know about,” she was telling him. “That redheaded kid who works the bar at Freddy’s? He thought I photographed him outside the church after the first funeral. And I have reason to believe that he’s been spying in my window. Someone told me they saw him. I think.”

At least, they haven’t gotten to the lovey-dovey stage, thought Stan. Mary would kill me if Claire took his camera before I told her about mine.

“Is that right?” Johnny seemed interested.

“I mean, I don’t have it in for that kid or anything. Really. I would only like my cameras back if he had anything to do with taking them. I wouldn’t press charges. I just want my stuff back.”

“Unless it’s needed for evidence,” said Stan, immediately getting the gist of the conversation. “In which case you won’t see any of it for a long, long time. Hi, Johnny.”

“How’s the boy, Stan?”

“Good. Good. Which brings me to the reason I came out here. Claire, do you remember my old camera?”

“No,” she said, wishing he would go away.

“Don’t let’s start arresting people here before we have anything on them,” Johnny joked, raising his hands above his head.

“No, of course not. It’s just that—”

“The Contax,” Stan said happily. “You remember. From Zeiss Ikon. The one I brought home from Germany. With the 1.5 lens speed.”

Claire frowned. “The only reason I mention him is because I saw him again today and Stefan told me—”

“Oh, so you are still hanging—”

“No, I am not. A 1.5 lens speed?” She turned to Stan. “Gee. I don’t remem—”

“Of course you don’t, because you were just a kid when I was using it. Mom just happened to mention that you might get a kick out of it. It’s just wrapped up in the attic doing nothing.”

“What’s a 1.5 lens speed?” Johnny wanted to know.

“It’s incredible,” Claire’s eyes shone. “It’s almost equivalent to a human eye … it lets you take a picture in candlelight. Without a flash.”

“And they don’t make them like that anymore,” Stan bragged. “Incidentally, it has the largest base range finder for accuracy distance measuring. And of course a built in light meter.” He watched Claire’s mouth begin to water. “The thing cost a thousand dollars in the forties. So you can imagine what it must be worth now.”

“A kitchen and a camera from the forties,” Johnny’s hesitant smile lit up. “What else do you want in one day?”

“Yeah. Gee. What is this?”

Stan looked back and forth at them. Some sort of private joke.

Johnny sensed his discomfort (so did Claire, but she was hoping it would give him a hint) and he brought them back to Stan’s camera. “So what did you do?” Johnny laughed, “take it off some dead Nazi?”

“In case you didn’t know,” Stan caught him up short, “military law dictated that all cameras, guns, and binoculars be turned in, at risk of being shot. We were ordered to put all of these magnificent guns and cameras in piles on the street and run over them with a half-track. Oh, geez, it was heartbreaking.”

“So my father relieved the army of some of that diabolical task and sent a couple of them home,” Claire said.

“Well. You wouldn’t want to see them destroyed. So you see, this camera”—Stan was just getting warmed up—“can handle speeds up to twelve fiftieths of a second.”

The Mayor rolled over onto his back and let the cool wet seep into his bones.

“Or, in layman’s terms, one thousand two hundred fiftieths.”

“I’m glad you clarified that,” Johnny winked at Claire.

Claire smiled at him vaguely. She was far away, remembering another time and place. It was years ago. She’d taken a house on the island of Jamaica, in Negril. A magnificent little house, with a thatched roof and a small porch not twenty feet from the turquoise sea. Wolfgang had made a bevy of friends up at Rick’s (where they all used to run into each other and watch the big orange sun plop into the ocean without fail each evening). She’d gone swimming every day. Lots of people would drop by and Wolfgang (an excellent cook) would concoct enormous meals. A lovely round woman named Emily, very shiny and black, had come with the house and done all of the cleaning up. “All your friends,” she would marvel to Claire, “are so sophisticated and chic. My, my.”

And then one day a new couple had arrived. They stayed in the house beside Claire’s—alongside, not on the water. Their names, Claire remembered very well: Anthony and Theresa. They were on their honeymoon. Anthony, Emily had informed them while she swept the kitchen floor, drove a truck back at home where they came from. A small town, at that, on the south shore of Long Island. And he had a tattoo on his arm. “The south shore,” Wolfgang had said, stirring his meringue suspiciously. “Isn’t that the wrong shore?”

No one had bothered very much with the honeymooners. And, if truth be told, neither had they bothered much with anyone. They were neither sophisticated nor chic. Claire used to hear them laughing very late at night. She would turn in her bed and look at the beautiful iridescent green chameleon that lived on her wall and she would listen to them. They really were sort of vulgar. Claire would wake up later and later each day, somehow unrefreshed, and fall into the light blue water, where she would stay.

Finally the couple was leaving. Anthony, to everyone’s amusement, had rented a boat to come and pick them up and take them near the airport so that they wouldn’t have to drive halfway around the island in some dusty taxi. They had to wade out a good ways into the water to get into the boat. Claire had gone out with Emily to watch them go. They were very excited. There were gifts galore for family back on Long Island. Cheap, touristy gifts, but that was the idea, Theresa had defended them when one fell into the water and Anthony made fun of her distress. At last everything was on the boat. Out went Anthony with a last-moment-in-paradise dive. Theresa gathered her lavender dress around her (she was a big young girl) and out she walked, very slowly, erectly, forever holding this moment in her memory. Something caught in Claire’s sophisticated heart. “My, my, my,” Emily observed. “Now there goes a happy girl. A happy girl.”

Claire had never forgotten either of them. And all of those fancy friends they’d spent their time with there were gone, forgotten and invisible.

“Claire?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t mention this to anyone,” Johnny said, tapping his shirt pocket, referring to the cufflink.

“No, I know. I won’t. And Johnny? Come back safely.”

Michaelaen trollied round and round his room. The waddle truck he sat on was for small boys but sometimes he would get back up on it for old times’ sake. He could think and look at the television at the same time. “Mister Rogers” was on, and even though he’d let them all know he didn’t watch him anymore, he did, and he even liked him a lot. Especially when they did the land of make believe. Michaelaen unwrapped his peanut butter cup and popped it into his mouth. There it would melt ever so slowly until it was the best taste in the world and then he’d chew his brains out. Mommy didn’t go for that at all. She’d make her eyebrows wiggle down and then she always told what a good thing it was that the job had a dental plan, but she didn’t say it like it was a good thing. Worriedly, he eyed the closet where his secret box was. He knew the marble was still in there because he remembered when he put it in there how it had looked. It had looked nice. He had to bring it back though, or maybe someone else would get in trouble, like Miguel. Poor Miguel. They’d sent him far, far, far away. He’d promised Miguel he’d put the marble back and he was going to only … and Grandma always said if you didn’t do the right thing it would come back at you. So he was going to put it back. If he could just remember where the cufflink was. He scratched his head. He’d better check once more. He might have overlooked it when he’d gone in there to stash the pecan shorties. But no, he didn’t think so. It would be much better to have them both when he went back, so he wouldn’t have to go back there twice. Just the thought of going back at all made Michaelaen’s whole head swim. Uh-oh … it could have fallen out of his pocket the same as his quarter had done that time.

First Michaelaen pretended that it didn’t matter so much and he kept going in a circle around his room. Only he knew one thing. He didn’t want anyone to get in trouble because of him. So he better not tell anyone. Maybe he could tell Johnny. He chewed the skin just healing around his tender thumbnail. But if he told, he could get Mommy killed. His breaths came short and quick and on his tongue he met that eggy, awful taste of blood.

In the kitchen it was busy and still. Claire sat at the table and chopped garlic and piñoli nuts into basil leaves and olive oil. The air was full with the fragrance and her taste-buds were almost anesthetized with the clovelike snap of the basil. She felt herself charmingly domestic and she hummed “Au Claire de la Lune.” It was, she noted, imperative to have a western window like this in the kitchen. She even liked her mother’s ginger red geraniums at the moment, all lit up like a Ladies’ Home Journal. Of course, she would have done it a bit differently, with dwarf hollyhocks, perhaps, or even blooming king aloe and New Mexican cacti. She sliced a lemon in half and caught the bursting juice with the rim of the bowl. There were limitless possibilities. Although she wasn’t sure if that house had a western window in the rear. Already she was scheming, she reprimanded herself. Of course she knew exactly which house it was he’d meant. It was the old Patton house. She’d passed it many times on her walks with the Mayor. She’d even looked at it, now and then, for its simple prettiness. She hadn’t known that old Miss Patton, an old-world sort of still-wore-a-hat-to-tea old lady, had died. She was the kind of woman who’d leave a good spirit in the house, a Katherine Hepburn sort of a woman, both elegant and salty. And the house, if she remembered correctly, had nice, big, square rooms. She found herself mentally decorating the bedroom in dim yellow chintz. And then imagining Johnny, cold legs from night duty, climbing on top of her under the quilt, raising her nightgown and warming his hands underneath her soft hips … She caught her breath and cleared her throat and threw another clove of garlic in. Not to mention the twin dogwood in front of the house. Pure billowy white in the springtime and red as maple ivy in the fall.

The telephone jolted her out of her reverie. “Hello,” she said while she smiled at the dog. He really looked like he could use a snack. She tossed him an entire Vienna finger—usually she reserved half for herself, but just now she could only be tenderhearted.

“Yes, hello. Is this the studio of Claire Breslinsky?”

“That’s one way to look at it. Who’s this?”

“This is Jupiter Dodd’s office. Will you connect me with Ms. Breslinsky please?”

Claire pulled her foot down off the chair beside her. “This is she.”

“Hold the line, please.” The telephone crackled, Spyro Gyra carried on over light FM on hold, and then Jupiter Dodd himself broke in. “Claire!”

“Hi. Gee. What a surprise.”

“Nice to hear your charming voice. Have your ears been ringing?”

“Sorry?”

“I’ve been talking about you to some friends. Have your ears been ringing?”

“Aunt Claire?”

“Actually, no.”

“Aunt Claire?”

“Just a second, honey. I’m on the phone. I’m sorry, my nephew was talking to me. So you’ve been bad-mouthing me all over town, eh?”

“Ha, ha.”

Michaelaen tugged on her shorts.

She opened her eyes to their widest circumference and clenched her teeth back and forth at him. Then she shooed him away with a brisk, determined backhand.

“… so if you haven’t already started work on the book,” Dodd was saying as Michaelaen’s hunched little back retreated out the door, “we were discussing using you to catalogue the gallery’s American Women show.”

“Which gallery?” Claire poked her nose through the blind and watched him meander out into the street. Iris stood out on her lawn raking seed.

“The Volkert.”

Even she had heard of that one. But without all of her equipment … “I’m awfully sorry, Jupiter, but you see—”

“Of course, we’ll pay your day rate.”

“Yes, but … did you say day rate?”

“We don’t pay more than day rate for catalogue. Nobody does.”

“What sort of stuff is it?” She could always start off with her dad’s Contax. Rent anything else she’d need. Day rate might not put a dent in a down payment for a house but it would go a long way toward buying chintz over on Grand Street and recovering Salvation Army furniture.

“Mostly modernistic. Objective symbolism. You know, message stuff. That Grillo has such a colossal conscience.”

“That’s okay. I even like that kind of thing. I admire significance.” At least, she confided to herself, a job like this wouldn’t compromise her treasured integrity. “To tell you the truth,” she told him, “I’d jump at the chance.”

“Hmm. I’m afraid there are a couple pop op things, if that offends you.”

“Well, it does. But I’d overlook it for the chance to shoot the Grillos. She’s very good. I might shoot them at the beach.”

“The beach?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not. I guess.”

Michaelaen let himself out the back door and watched his ball bounce down the steps. Oh. The moon was already over in the sky and the sun was still out at the same time. That would mean something. Miss von Lillienfeld would know what. He walked carefully across the yard and said hello softly to the rabbits. The sprinkler was on, going easy does it back and forth with a squeak every time and he stood right beside it, waiting with his clenched-hard jaw until the inevitable arc of wet would crush him suddenly with icy cold. He knew that this time if he got caught, he’d really get in trouble. This time there wouldn’t be Miguel or anyone to make the whole thing fun. No more taking silly pictures anymore, either. He whistled a little bit and looked around. Aunt Carmela came down from the bus stop and went in the house and then the coast was clear. Michaelaen took the screen off Mrs. Dixon’s cellar window, climbed inside, and pulled the screen back up into place.

They hung up after ten more minutes of making plans. Claire rubbed her hands together energetically and looked around for the dog. She was going to give him a slobbering kiss. But he must have gone out. Anyway, he wasn’t in the kitchen. Oops. She must go out and get Michaelaen. He really wasn’t supposed to be out on his own.

“Michaelaen!”

“He’s scouring the lawn for money.”

“Carmela. Did you drop a cufflink in Freddy’s car?”

“Lower your voice, if you don’t mind.”

“Just did you?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I found it in your car—”

“Oh, my car! What a riot. I can’t believe you got it back already.”

“You’re welcome. And I gave it to Johnny and he took it down to the station house.”

“Took what down to where?”

“Carmela. This roulette wheel cufflink that I found in your car happens to be a clue. Maybe.”

“Oh, I can’t bear it. A clue. Who are you now, Miss Marple?”

Claire felt her pulse quicken. She could have strangled her. Instead, she told her about her new job. It did the trick, all right. Carmela smiled unconvincingly and turned scarlet.

“So, what is it, for a month or so?”

“Yeah, you know. As long as it takes me to cover each one. Maybe a couple of months.” Screw her. She was fed up with always treading carefully around Carmela’s ego. And it wasn’t as though the pussyfooting helped any. She was as arrogant as ever, if not worse. “And by the way, if you’re still interested in Stefan, I believe he’s a free agent.”

“You mean it’s over with you two?”

“Most definitely.”

“Meaning you’re back on with Benedetto.”

“Not necessarily. But yes.” She grinned foolishly.

“Honey bunny, you are so stupid.”

“I know.”

“He’ll be bringing home his beer-drinking cronies and they’ll all sit around and talk dick talk and you’ll be left with the wives listening to what miniseries they’re watching that week.”

“Maybe I’ll start watching … oh, dear, no I won’t. Hell. You can still love someone and be different from them. At least, I think not to try is horrible. Not to at least give it a chance.”

“You’ll wind up pregnant.”

“So what? What the heck other sort of way should I want to be, seeing as how I’m in love with him?”

“And you’ll get fat …”

“So I’ll get fat. Christ! At my age there’s no better reason to get fat. At least I’ll be a real person with my own life. You know, you have all these great friends in town who adore you and they all love to have you around, and yeah, sure, of course, you’re beautiful and amusing and who wouldn’t want you around, but they all go home at night to their own places, their own homes. They close the door and there they are, together with their own lives. And where do you go? I mean, don’t you ever want to find someone you can build something with? Instead of … of … of clandestinely screwing around with your sister’s ex-husband?”

And of course, Zinnie stood just at that moment in the doorway with an ashen face.

“Thank you,” Carmela narrowed her eyes and leered at Claire as one would expect a snake to leer. “Thank you very much miss better-than-everyone-else and God forbid you might forget to preach it to them because you’ve just ruined not one but two afternoons.”

Mary and Stan steamrolled through the doorway, pushing Zinnie aside, thrusting plastic bags full of groceries at all of them. Claire got busy right away and then so did Carmela. They buried themselves in cabinets and put away soup cans and dog biscuits and sponges and Jello. Mary just kept handing them things and they just kept on putting away. Stan saw his chance and left and Mary stood there grumbling with her cereal boxes. “Well, Zinnie,” she said, “are you going to just stand there like a lump on a log or are you going to pitch in and help?”

“I was just thinking,” Zinnie drawled, “about the time we all went to visit Carmela and Arnold in their new home in Bayside—”

“Put that ice cream in the freezer before it melts,” Mary said to Claire. “Now what’s the Mayor barking at?”

“And just as we were leaving—boy, it’s funny because I can remember it like it was yesterday—just as we were leaving and I was the last one out and it was so dark on that porch and Daddy was honking to hurry up and I went to kiss Arnold good-bye, did you know he stuck his whole tongue down my throat?”

Right then the kitchen went still and they all looked at Zinnie. “I mean, I was just a teenager—” she started to say, but she didn’t finish, because Mary’s hand shot out from across the room and whacked her smack across the face.

“And another thing!” Mary’s strong voice roared at the three of them. “If the three of ye go after each other like cats, like blessed enemies, for pity’s sake, where will you be when your father and I are gone? What will you do, stand paces apart above my casket? I ask you.”

“Ma—”

“Don’t interrupt me, I’ll be through when I’m through. What did we go and have the lot of you for, if it was only to argue and bicker and hate yourselves till you’re green in the faces and wrinkled with lines running this way from jealousy and that way from envy. And all these years I thought when you’d be grown you’d start to care for each other and I would be able to take a backseat and relax, only no, no, it sure won’t be like that for a while!”

There the three women stood, their heads hung in adult supplication. Nothing had changed. She would mention her casket and they would all fall to pieces and promise to be good wee lassies once again. Until next time.

“Mary?”

“What is it, Stan? Can’t you go back out and bring the dog in? He’s driving me mad.”

“Is Michaelaen in here?”

“Sure I thought he’s with you!”

“He’s out on the lawn, Dad.”

“He’s not.”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“Well, he isn’t there now.”

“Glory be.”

They went out quickly, each of them taking off in separate directions. Michaelaen wasn’t under the porch. He wasn’t in the garage. He wasn’t in anyone’s car, a favorite place of his to be, just sitting in someone’s car pretending he was going somewhere. He was, it became terrifyingly clear, missing.

Zinnie stood in the middle of the lawn and shouted his name, again and again, again and again. Her teeth began to chatter.

“Oh God, it’s all my fault,” Claire came outside after rechecking the house. “It’s all my fault.”

“Shut up,” Carmela told her. “And shut the dog up.”

Johnny arrived with Pokey Ryan in an unmarked car, for Stan had called the 102 immediately. They screeched to a halt and went right over to Zinnie. Johnny put his arm around her and cupped her head in his hand. “Now there’s no reason to be alarmed … we’ve got no reason to think anything’s wrong. But … you know … we just want to be sure. We want to get some help here, okay?”

Zinnie, holding her fist, shook her head yes. She didn’t call his name hoarsely anymore, just every minute or so someone else would and the pain would greet her again, quickly and deeply, another knife in her gut. She couldn’t think and she couldn’t pray. She only whispered over and over, “God. Please. God. Anything. God. Please.”

“Uh oh!” Michaelaen worried. They were all outside. He could hear them. They were looking for him. The darn old Mayor was going to make them find him. It was dark down here. He didn’t like it anymore. Maybe he would just leave the things down here on that old shelf and go. But now he heard something else. It was Mrs. Dixon coming down the cellar stairs. He was more afraid of her than all the others put together. Once she’d even hurt Miguel. And then she’d given him money and stuff and taken all those pictures. He didn’t think he wanted any stuff from her. He’d just hide for a minute and then when she went upstairs he’d go right home. Of course! He knew a good spot. That old refrigerator with the legs on it. It even had a nice light on inside. He climbed inside and shut the door.

“Somebody shut that fucking dog up,” Johnny cried.

“It isn’t the sound of the dog,” Mary murmured. “It’s that other, strange wild sound that’s coming from the von Lillienfeld house. What is that sound, then? It is a banshee wailing, to be sure.”

“Stop that superstitious nonsense,” Stan yelled at her, frightened. “It’s the cat. Von Lillienfeld’s cat. That Siamese.”

“So now we know what but we still don’t know why,” Ryan shuddered. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

“That’s the sound of the banshee, I tell you.”

“So stay here if you want to, but I’m going over there to see what’s going on.” Stan headed across the street and the lot of them followed. Claire stood where she was. She would have to calm the Mayor down. What was he doing over there on Dixon’s lawn, anyway? Between the cat wailing and the dog barking, she thought she’d go insane. She could turn the hose on him. You’d think he was trying to tell them something, the way he just wouldn’t let up. She went to follow the hose to the nozzle but it ended out back on the sprinkler. What the hell, he was closer to Dixon’s hose anyway. Claire went behind Mrs. Dixon’s garbage cans to turn on her hose. There was one can lopsided on a rock, and as she leaned across it she knocked the lid off. As she went to put it back she caught sight of something down deep in the can. Some magazine or something on cheap paper, a star on a red background and a child on a horse. The star was a pentagram, it occurred to her as she turned on the hose. And the child on the horse had no clothes on. She turned the hose back off. The Mayor looked at her. She looked, alarmed, back at the Mayor. With one last, painful snort, he dropped down onto the grass and was finally quiet.

It was quite a while ago—weeks—when this whole thing had started. She and the Mayor had been sleeping on the porch. The garbagemen had made their way down the block and the noise had awakened her. A golden Plymouth had rattled down the block. And Mrs. Dixon had slammed the lid down on the can and hurried back into the house. Mrs. Dixon. What had she been so in a hurry about? Wasn’t that the same day of the first gory murder? Hadn’t she had a strange feeling then? A premonition of some sort? Or had she simply been a witness to somebody getting rid of something they would rather no one saw? A pervert did not a murderer make. And then she noticed the screen right next to her, a little crooked. A little off. A little crooked for a house whose screens were all in straight as little soldiers. It was utterly ridiculous to think of Mrs. boring old Dixon involved in anything underhanded. She was her mother’s friend. Well, if not her friend, at least her dear old neighbor. With never a thought of suspicion. She and Mom walked to church together, after all. Since years. Years and years. They hadn’t always. Something had started it. What had happened years ago? Something with Michael? Hadn’t something happened to Michael that he’d never told her about? He was frightened of Mrs. Dixon. Yes, she knew that now. That’s why he wasn’t afraid to cut through Iris von Lillienfeld’s yard the way the rest of them were. Because the yard next to his own held some secret more terrifying. All his false bravado had been fear. And Mrs. Dixon and good-hearted Mom had taken to walking together to church. Suddenly she remembered where she’d seen that strange captioned picture: in Michael’s bottom drawer. Had Mrs. Dixon given Michael dirty pictures? Claire looked up at the big, fine house. She looked and looked. The garage door was open. Mrs. Dixon still kept Rudy’s cars in there. Old cars, they were. From back in the days when all the cars they made were black. Claire could hardly remember Rudy Dixon, how he was before he’d had his stroke and turned into a whiskered, uriney thing to be left by the window in the front parlor. He’d been sort of bald and flashy back then. Yes, very flashy.

Claire remembered herself as a small girl, out here in the driveway, just like this. Mr. Dixon was pulling out of the garage and he’d stopped to say how do. She’d hated him because he called her Red. “Hi ya, Red,” he’d said. “How do?” His beefy wrist was as still as an animal on the Pontiac door and his cufflinks, roulette wheels, had glittered like gold.

Claire returned to the present with a wheezing gasp.

“Johnny?” She shielded her eyes from the sun. “Johnny, can you come here a second? I don’t know. This is stupid. But there’s this screen loose here in a spot where Michaelaen could possibly have gotten into—”

“Who lives here?”

“Mrs. Dixon. You met her. My mother’s friend.”

Johnny remembered Mrs. Dixon. Hadn’t Ryan even asked him who the hell she was? So many of those Con-Tact sheets they’d taken from Claire’s darkroom had her kisser planted all over them. She was always getting in the way. Even the shots up in the woods were peppered with Mrs. Dixon.

“Who else lives here?” Johnny asked Claire.

“Else? Nobody else. She lives here alone.”

“Here? In this place?”

They looked up at the big well-kept house. It was so big that it suddenly seemed strange to Claire as well. “It’s just that I found something here in her garbage pail and I remember her husband, years ago, having a cufflink like the one I found in Carmela’s car and … Jesus, Johnny, if she has Michaelaen—”

“All right. Calm down. Where’s your mother?”

“They went over to Iris’s house because her Siamese … Johnny, they all think Iris has something to do with this but I don’t believe—”

He peered down into the can and gave a low whistle.

“You run over and get your mother so we can get through the front door and I’ll try and jimmy my way in this way. You tell them something else. Tell them”—he smashed his foot through the window—“that the kids broke her window and they want to get their ball. Or see the damages. Just get inside. And get Ryan over here. Tell him what’s happening.”

“Johnny, if she hurt Michaelaen—”

“Hurry up. Go. Hurry up.”

Claire ran across the street. In her mind’s eye she saw Mrs. Dixon’s plain, pale face. The sound of wind chimes and that face looking up at her from the alley. Those eyes had said something else besides what she had told her, that she’d come to check up on her. She’d looked at her with fear. Because she knew Claire knew without knowing.

Mary pounded on the big brown door. Then she rang the bell. She didn’t know what they thought they wanted her to do over here. What would her Michaelaen be doing over here? Why, if they thought Mrs. Dixon had anything to do with … why the very idea—like walking backward through her memory … so very many years ago … she’d come across her Michael in the garage and Mrs. Dixon in there with him. But, of course, nothing had happened. Nothing, Michael had told her. Nothing had happened and he was crying from the fear of the dark. Or had she told him that so he would think it? She knocked harder on the grand oak door.

“Mary,” Stan called, “we’re going in here whether she opens or not. Just get out of the way and Ryan and I—”

But right then the door opened, a squad car pulled up, Miss von Lillienfeld came outside on her lawn and Mrs. Dixon, seeing them all, pee-ed right down the front of her nice rayon dress.

“Christmas,” said Stan.

“Coming through,” Ryan came up the steps.

“Michaelaen!” Zinnie cried again hoarsely.

“Michaelaen!” they all called, and they went in and went through the house and kept calling. Only Michaelaen was far far away from them now, and even the hum of the fridge from that moment of opening had stopped. Even the hurry up cold had just stopped.

Claire came down the stairs after Johnny. He was back at the furnace, all sooty, glad not to have found Michaelaen there.

“Come on,” he said. “He’s not down here. I checked all over.”

“Where’s my son?!” Zinnie’s voice carried through the whole house. “Where’s my baby?!”

It was finally over. Mrs. Dixon grasped hold of the back of her husband’s cane chair and she knew it was finally over. If only that fool Claire had stayed away. But no. She’d had to return looking just like that little brat Michael who’d started the whole thing. It was all his fault. And now hers. Twins! They were both from the devil, that was where. Stirring things up. Making her remember. Why was Mary Breslinsky looking at her like that? So aghast. Didn’t she know this had nothing to do with her? This was separate.

So why did they keep up this shouting? What did they want? What did Mrs. Breslinsky’s girl Zinnie still want from her? Didn’t she know it was over? Hadn’t she shown them the cameras? She’d never touched Michaelaen. Their precious Michaelaen. They should only know what a little pig he was. What cunning little pigs they all were. Innocent children! Ha! Innocent nothing. Hadn’t her own father taught her all that. A hollow-sounding laugh ripped like gas from her throat.

“Come on, Claire.” Johnny’s voice sounded hollow in the cold, dismal cellar.

She turned with him to go, then looked for no reason back over her shoulder and noticed the trickle of water that ran from the refrigerator. She remembered the sprinkler. Only what would be worse, if he was there or if he wasn’t? “Johnny? Johnny, the refrigerator.”

She held her breath and watched the light bulb naked on a chain.

His head was on the wall of the sour refrigerator and his face, all pearly and closed, the color of drowned abalone. His hands and feet were blue.

“Helllllp,” Claire called with no sound, like a dream where you’re trying to run and go nowhere. But Johnny pulled him out, pushed her out of the way, and was running up the stairs and out onto the lawn.

“Get me some help here,” Johnny shouted to everyone.

“My baby! Let me see my baby!” Zinnie shrieked, only Johnny wouldn’t let her. He was down giving him mouth to mouth.

“Is he dead?” Carmela cried out.

“Hail Mary full of grace …” Mary prayed.

They were all coming out on their lawns. Everybody was out and they watched without talking. You could hear the short gasps Johnny made into his mouth, you could feel him breathe for him and the hope that waited, praying, inside every heart.

There was nothing.

Johnny lay down straight on top of him, smothering him, warming him, breathing for him. Making him live, goddammit, with all of the fury and faith he had in him. Come on. Come on. Live.

With an arc of his back like a lover’s reply, Michaelaen jerked with one spasm and vomited wildly.

“Yeah,” Johnny said to him. “Yeah.”

And the ambulance came, the paramedics ran over, and Johnny stood up, covered with vomit and furnace soot, and Claire looked at him standing there and thought she would die of this great love that held her.

They brought Mrs. Dixon out with no trouble. They led her down the steps slowly, almost softly, her very best red ruby earrings clasped firmly to her fat, doughy lobes. The neighbors stood about. Mrs. Dixon worried someone would steal her shopping cart off the porch and one of the officers pulled it inside.

“It’s hard to believe,” someone said.

Iris von Lillienfeld leaned on her fence. It was true. Monsters never looked like monsters. They were always ordinary people. That’s how they got away with evil as long as they did. Iris was suddenly beat. She could use, on this night, a stiff drink.

The Mayor, in the shadow, watched it all. He dare not close his eyes now. He wanted to see, be it hell or high water, which way he was going. And he was going. This had all been too much for his old soldier’s bones. Surely, though, it had been worth it. To go out in a bright flame of glory. For he was going. It had all been too much. A hero’s death. Yes, what better way. Perhaps a little sooner than he’d expected … but for the worthiest of causes. He moved himself and shifted his insides until the great pain lessened. One comfort: he would live on in his offspring. That was something. Quite something. He thought of Natasha underneath the screened porch. She would look for him. Sadly. And Stan. How his dear friend Stan would miss him. He wouldn’t want to go on for much longer like this at any rate. And he’d had a fine life. A long life. Up and down these old roads and the sidewalks raised up at the seams from good roots. Strong roots. Well. This night without him would be fine over old Richmond Hill. Very black and right dotty with stars. Ah, see that. Here came Claire looking for him. She cocked her head as she came over closer. “Oh, no,” she whispered softly and she fell to his side and stroked his brave warrior’s fur.

They watched together as the hollering ambulance drove the others away and then the quiet rose up with the moon until all of it seemed only terrible. Claire held him close to her then and she started to sing, any song come to mind, just the cheer of her mettle against any fear of faint heart.

He still realized the house … and the scents of the family within, growing farther and farther away now. “She wheeled a wheelbarrow,” she sang, “through streets broad and narrow. Singing cockles and mussels. Alive alive-o.”

And over the street in the pale sturgeon’s moon, with the grace of his ancestor’s, stood Lü the Wanderer, the old Siamese. He stretched and he walked through the web that had been there. “Singing cockles and mussels,” Claire sang. “Alive alive-o,” she sang to his bright open eyes.