30

You could say peanut butter all you wanted to, but that didn’t mean somebody was going to hand you a sandwich—or any information. The woman who had taken Kurt Roberts’s message at the pageant switchboard had nothing to give Sam. No, she’d never talked with Mr. Roberts before, so she had no reason to think it was really him on the phone, but then she didn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t either. Sam could tell from her tone that the woman thought Sam was inordinately suspicious. The way big-city people are. And she found it unattractive.

From the top, she said, in response to Sam’s prodding, and no, she most certainly did not tape-record calls, why on earth would she do that, she wrote them down on pink message slips and that was good enough for anybody around here, Mr. Roberts called and said he had received a call from New York and he had to return on business. He didn’t sound strange. No, he didn’t. But then, she didn’t know what would be strange—for him. He sounded regretful, as would anybody in his right mind who had to leave the pageant and was letting people down. Maybe a little like he had a cold. That was all she remembered. You know, this was their very busiest time of year, it was like working the switchboard at Grand Central Station and Christmas at Macy’s rolled into one, she imagined, and she couldn’t be expected to remember every detail of every call.

But Sam knew the phone company’s records of the Monopoly’s calls would show that call from New York. Except there was no way to access them unless the police were investigating a missing person, and no one seemed to care enough to file the report. Not his office, his mom, his girlfriend, certainly not Cindy Lou, not the pageant.

Okay. The handwriting was on the wall. She was giving this thing up, just like Cindy Lou had suggested—right after she talked with Big Gloria.

*

Harry already asked all that, said Gloria, when Sam found her sipping on a diet cola in her little office, taking a break from her supervising duties. Gloria kept on flipping the pages of her magazine, the one that gave detailed plans for turning garages into family rooms, thinking maybe if she was rude, since Sam was Southern and could tell the difference, she’d go away.

The more folks came poking around in her business, asking questions about that Kurt Roberts, the more Gloria was thinking maybe she’d take the stash she had—what Harry had won her, plus the $5K stuffed under her mattress—and head for New Orleans. She’d call Aunt Beautiful, who lived in the Faubourg Marigny, tell her to pull out the guest sheets and start making her some gumbo, she was coming home.

That way, no matter what had happened to Roberts, even if it was nothing, she’d have Junior back where things were real. Where there was family and a real city, been there since the Spanish and the French, with real traditions and customs and beliefs, not a make-believe place like Atlantic City with a false front on it, the Boardwalk and the casinos, like one of those movie sets.

Which got Big Gloria to thinking, who made them—movie sets? Who built those things? And how real did they make them, or was it like she’d read about the food you saw in magazines, it looked good but you couldn’t eat it? Maybe she’d ask Junior’s friend Rashad, who knew a lot about movies.

But what was this Samantha Adams asking her now? Big Gloria pulled back from Hollywood and heard this: Had anybody else come around looking for Kurt Roberts?

And then Big Gloria said yes. Yes, there was. Somebody she’d completely forgotten about till Sam asked the question just like that. There was that old man with the limp who had come around, when was that, Tuesday, she thought. Yes, it must have been Tuesday, because now she remembered thinking about it when she saw that woman who reminded her of a Kewpie doll who said she was looking for Miss New Jersey, Big Gloria wasn’t ever sure what she was up to, and then there was Wayne busting Harry in the lip. That was all on the same day.

That, and Junior getting pushed in the pool by Kurt Roberts, but she wasn’t bringing that up, for sure.

What? said Sam. What? A Kewpie doll and Miss New Jersey and who busted Harry in the lip? What man with a limp?

Yeah, said Gloria, seizing on that last and hoping she’d give Sam enough that she’d just trot her curious self away. The man with the limp was old. Wearing a white shirt and black pants and one of those beige windbreakers like old guys always do.

And what else?

Well, he gave me some money to call him if I saw that Mr. Roberts, said Gloria.

He did? Samantha was looking really excited. Good. Gloria could tell she was on the right track here, feeding her something that would lead her far, far away from Junior. Because she didn’t think Junior knew Angelo.

She did, of course, know him, that is. She’d bought pizza in his place plenty of times on her way home when she was too tired to cook. His place, Tommy’s, on the edge of Ducktown made really good pizza pie, lots better than those chains, your Dominos. Angelo didn’t recognize her, of course. A man like him would never pay any attention to just another maid.

Yeah, said Gloria. Ange gave me, I think it was $20.

Ange? Ange? You mean you know this man?

Gloria couldn’t see that it would do any harm to tell her, so she did. She also told her that people said there was gambling went on in Tommy’s, the name of the place the old man Angelo ran. So maybe Sam might want to be careful if she went over there to talk to him.