BUT PROBABLY not for much longer. Not unless I found a way to get Vincent Costello off my back.
I exited three stops later, in front of a strip mall lined with the kind of stores my brain is programmed to ignore: a comic book shop I’d bet my life sold weed out of the back, one of those cook-your-own-food Mongolian barbecues (Anthony always thought they looked like fun; my argument was, what’s the point if you have to do all the work?), an antiques store with busted GI Joes and ancient lunch boxes in the window. Crap, crap, and more crap. And crappiest of all: a women’s discount apparel store with half a roll of duct tape holding the front window in place.
Like it or not, this was a new day for me, and new days require new outfits. I held my breath, stepped inside. It was suddenly clear to me what people meant by off-the-rack: half the merchandise was lying trampled on the floor. The place itself looked trampled. The drop ceiling was buckled from water damage, the blue synthetic carpet was worn through to the concrete foundation, and the long, dark cracks in the drywall reminded me of my grandmother’s spider veins. Even the security cameras hadn’t been updated since the seventies.
In other words, the place was perfect. I didn’t have to search hard to find the kind of outfit Anna Costello would never be caught dead in: acid jeans, a pink sweatshirt with GLAMOUR GIRL scrawled across the chest in purple glitter, a pair of those rubber clogs patterned with geometric cutouts, plastic sunglasses sporting neon-green frames, and a handful of sparkly rainbow hair clips that I planned to stick at random intervals all around my head. I could sit on Vincent Costello’s lap and he still wouldn’t recognize me.
I took my haul up to the counter and paid—this was one place I could use my credit cards without fear of a Costello hearing about it seconds later—then carried the drawstring plastic bag back to the only dressing room and swapped my new clothes for the old ones. I looked like a cross between a high school cheerleader and the last woman standing at the local casino’s boilermaker Thursdays. It would work just fine. Where I was going, I’d fit right in.
La Torre Bar (formerly La Torre Bar and Grille, but the latter part of the name was dropped when not even the most hardened wino would eat there) was five miles to the north, in a neighborhood I’d heard about but never visited. I decided to hoof it in my new clogs. I had time to kill: Victoria wouldn’t be there before happy hour, anyway.
Victoria Maria Elena Costello. Anthony’s first wife. In his more affectionate moments, Anthony called me “the upgrade.” Victoria kept the Costello name in part to piss off Anthony and in part because it came with major benefits. No one fires a Costello. No one assaults or insults a Costello. And men don’t hit on a Costello uninvited. Not even drunk men.
All that came in handy for Vicki given that she poured the drinks at La Torre. By the time I arrived, my new sweatshirt was a darker shade of pink, and my feet felt as though they’d been rubbed raw. The bar sat between a bodega and an abandoned storefront. A gaggle of aging men hung outside the bodega playing cards and smoking cigars. I cocked my head and winked at them: a new personality to go with my new wardrobe. Then I gave myself a silent pep talk and pushed through the bar’s saloon-style doors.
The interior was all felt pennants slung crooked against wood paneling. The sawdust on the floor was probably the same sawdust they’d laid out when the place opened three decades ago. At a little after five, only the hard-core regulars were in attendance—drunks of both genders with sunken mouths, busted capillaries, clothes that would fall apart if they were ever washed. Of course, the population would look much the same at 8:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m., midnight.
She was standing behind the bar, chopping up lemons, with a black rag slung over one shoulder. She hadn’t changed much since the last time I saw her. Fake hair, fake eyelashes, fake nails, fake tits, and none of it particularly well maintained.
“Hiya, Vicki,” I said.
She hated it when anyone shortened her name. Victoria sounded to her like royalty, and falling from Anthony’s castle to this hole-in-the-wall had done nothing to slow her ego.
“I know you?” she asked.
I took off the Cracker Jack–prize sunglasses.
“Know me?” I said. “You hate my guts.”
She glared across the bar, her jaw working double time. Vicki’s one of those people who can make the act of chewing gum look and sound like a war crime.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “You’re the lying, thieving, flat-chested whore. Anthony find a newer model yet?”
I grinned. I felt oddly pleased with myself. Her insults held no sway anymore. Nothing she said could faze me. I needed information from her, and that was it.
Namely, I needed to know who might want Anthony dead. Because while I believed either Sarah or Serena was involved, or maybe both of them, I didn’t believe they’d acted alone. I didn’t believe they’d done the stabbing. Combined they added up to about half Anthony’s weight. Maybe Serena turned off the alarm, let the killer in. Maybe Sarah sprinkled my husband’s eggs with powdered Valium. But the move against him had been sanctioned by a higher power. Maybe Vincent’s men weren’t coming after me to avenge Anthony. Maybe they were just finishing the job.
If anyone could cut through the maybes, it was Victoria. She’d been hands-on with his business interests—especially his extracurricular interests, the side deals he didn’t want Vincent to know about. She was the one who convinced him he wasn’t getting his due. It took a while, but her relationship with Anthony went south because she pushed too hard, wanted his fingers in more and more pies. That’s part of why I played deaf and dumb in my marriage. The other part was that I really didn’t want to know.
“I’m trying to imagine what brings an Italian American princess like you to this shithole on a weekday afternoon,” she said. “I’m not coming up with anything that makes my life better.”
“I’ve got questions,” I said. “Questions I’m pretty sure only you can answer.”
“Anthony did something to you, didn’t he?”
She was gloating. The poor thing really had no clue, and I wasn’t about to break the news until she told me what I wanted to know.
“In a way,” I said. “I’m not involved in his business dealings like you were. I was wondering who…”
“He’s in bed with?”
I nodded.
“You looking to hurt him? ’Cause if that could be done, believe me I’d have done it. Anthony’s protected from every angle. As bad as I wanted to see his little empire collapse—an empire I more or less built for him—I wasn’t going to get myself killed trying.”
“It isn’t that,” I said. “I just want to be prepared.”
An elderly patron at the end of the bar called out for a fresh pint. Vicki told him to keep his pants on.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “But if you want to make a play against Tony, it won’t be me who stops you. Nothing would make me happier than to see you both go down in flames.”
“That’s sweet, Vic,” I said. “So tell me: where is he vulnerable? Most likely to get in trouble?”
“You asking who would come after him?”
I gave another nod, felt the hair clips knocking against my skull.
“Granted, my information’s dated, but I’d look to the boys in blue.”
“The cops?”
“That’s right, hon: the cops. Tony blackmails them. Gets them to do his bidding. His, not Vincent’s. You starting to see the picture?”
It was a much bigger and uglier picture than I’d imagined. I leaned hard against a stool. Vicki smiled, enjoying herself.
“Could be one of the cops is after him. Could be Vincent himself. But the question you need to ask yourself is, how does Tony know which cops are dirty? Who’s feeding him the intel? ’Cause that person has a hell of a lot to lose. Could be he wants out.”
“You know who it is, don’t you?” I said. “Give me a name.”
She laughed. Her laugh was as fake as the rest of her.
“I’m not a rat, hon. But then I’m guessing you don’t really need me to tell you.”
It was a good guess.
“So what is it?” she asked. “Death threats? A pipe bomb through the bay window?”
“No,” I said. “Anthony’s already dead.”
I’d like to say I told her the truth because I thought she should know, but the even bigger truth is I got a kick out of watching her face turn colors beneath all that rouge.
“What are you talking about?”
“He was stabbed to death. I found him this morning in our kitchen. I’m no expert, but it looked like a crime of passion. I’m sure those dirty cops will come knocking at your door any minute.”
She picked up the knife she’d been using to cut lemons and pointed it at the door.
“You bring this shit to me?” she said. “Get the hell out or I swear to God I’ll do you the way they did Anthony.”
“Vicki, I—”
“You think I’m stupid? You’re here asking questions because you know it’s you they’re coming for next. You’ve got ‘Loose End’ tattooed across your forehead. And now I’ve got to worry about your deathbed confession: ‘I didn’t know anything about anything until Victoria spilled her guts.’ You’re lucky we’re standing in a room full of witnesses.”
On cue, the drunks stumbled off their stools and gathered around. The poor dears thought they were really quite threatening; I could have knocked any one of them over with my little finger. I took a last look at Vicki and told myself it was better to be the widow than the ex.