Two days later I was in Debby’s, working my way through my third beer when Diver walked in. It was just after midnight, so I guess he had just finished his tour of duty.
He took a stool next to me and said, “You were supposed to stay in touch, remember?” He was kidding, because it was a phrase we had used very freely over the past week.
“It’s all over,” I told him.
“Almost.”
Debby came over at that point and asked him, “Would you like something?”
“Please, I’ll have a beer,” he told her. He watched her walk to the tap and pour it, then watched her walk back and place it in front of him.
“Are you okay, Hank?” she asked, meaning my beer situation.
“I’m good, Deb, thanks.”
She walked to the other end of the bar, not to serve a customer, but so she wouldn’t overhear anything we had to say. She was not one to eavesdrop, intentionally or otherwise.
“My God,” he said, admiring her, “I wish I was your age. She looks like an angel.”
“She is,” I told him.
He sipped the beer and commented, “Man, that’s good.”
“You’re two behind me,” I informed him.
“You still upset?” he asked me.
“Only when I think about that girl putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger, which is only when I’m awake. When I’m asleep I just dream about it.”
“It’ll pass,” he told me, confidently.
“Will it?”
“You’ll make it pass, Hank. You’ll put it behind you and forget about it, because we’ve got to go on living, no matter what happens around us. For the most part, we forget the bad things, except on cold, rainy nights when we’re all alone,” he added, looking pointedly in Debby’s direction.
“Nice lecture,” I complimented him, then relented a bit and added, “and you’re probably right. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Interested in the aftermath?” he asked.
“As soon as I get another beer,” I told him. I got up, walked to the tap, leaned over and filled my mug myself. I was really starting to feel at home at Debby’s. She smiled at my self-service and I winked at her.
I went back to my stool. “Okay, shoot.”
“Melendez told us the story pretty much the way you did. He was supposed to pull the trigger and then discover her, but he couldn’t do it. He says she didn’t blame him, simply took the gun from him and did it herself. Then he panicked and buried her. Oh, by the way, he was the one who tried to run you down outside of Hopkins’ house.”
“Louie?” I asked, surprised.
“He wanted me to apologize to you for him. He says he was just trying to scare you, because he had heard you were looking for him. He thought you were trying to catch him for Penny’s murder.”
“Did he follow me there?” I asked.
“No, he said that he went to Penny’s house with intentions of breaking in and taking something of hers, I guess as a memento. When he came down the block he saw you getting out of your car. He recognized you because he had heard you were looking for him and had gotten your description, so that he could avoid you. After you went in, he parked his car and waited for you to come out. He was really concerned that you know that he didn’t mean to hurt you. You know, “he added, “he’s really harmless.”
“I know.”
“Imagine,” he said, “him trying to scare you.”
“Imagine,” I said, “he succeeded.”
“Yeah”
He started to signal Debby for another beer when I told him, “I’ll get it.”
I filled his as I had filled mine and handed it back to him.
“That blonde has got the most beautiful face I ever saw,” he commented.
“Hey,” I said, waving my hand in front on his face, “aftermath, remember?”
“Yeah, sure. We did a print check on Brinks. Turns out his real name is Georgio Bronccieri, out of Chicago.”
“DeLillo?”
“That’s the word we got.”
“You check with the Chicago RD?” I asked.
“Yeah. They say Bronccieri handled most of DeLillo’s sports fixes for two years, then suddenly left Chicago at the beginning of the year. He resurfaced here. They figure and we agree that DeLillo sent him here to set up a new operation at Island Downs. Looks like you got there before we did with that assumption.”
“What does Spencer say?”
He shook his head. “That old man is a mass of nerves, right now. He says he got the word from Chicago that a ‘Gordon Brinks’ was going to be his new trainer. Needless to say, he always took the word from Chicago as law.”
“How did he get hooked into working for DeLillo?” I asked.
“Who knows. Even he can’t pin it down. One day DeLillo was just there.” I sipped my beer and swirled it in the glass.
“Then Donero is clean?”
“I’m not finished,” he scolded me. “We did a check on DeLillo, a thorough one. He was born in Italy to Leonardo DeLillo and his wife, the former Angelina Benedetti. That was nineteen nineteen. In nineteen twenty-two, Mr. DeLillo was killed in an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“He was machine-gunned by a rival family.”
“I’ve heard that sort of thing was going around then.”
“Anyway, Mrs. DeLillo and her two-year-old son, Angelo, came to America — ”
“Climate in Italy get unhealthy, did it?” I asked.
“Will you let me tell it?”
“Sorry.”
“Mrs. DeLillo came to America and met a man in nineteen twenty-five. They got married, and in twenty-seven she gave birth to another boy, and they named him William, after her second husband’s father.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I told him, “I think I’m starting to catch your drift. Don’t tell me, let me guess. In twenty-five the former Mrs. DeLillo became Mrs. Donero.”
“You got it.”
“Hot damn! They’re brothers. Angie DeLillo and Willy Donero are brothers!”
“Half brothers,” he corrected. “And Brinks/Bronccieri works for DeLillo.”
I shrugged. “Well it’s a connection, however tenuous it might seem.”
“I don’t know if anything can be made of it,” Diver admitted, “but it does establish a connection. The rest of it is up to the courts.”
“A job well done,” I toasted him, raising my glass. He raised his and we clinked.
“How did you find me here?” I asked him.
He punched me lightly in the shoulder and said, “You know very well how. You left a message with your service that you would be here.”
That was true, I had left a message.
But it hadn’t been for him.
I was glad he had gotten it, though. I felt considerably better for having talked to him.
“I’ve got to go. I just thought you might like to know how things worked out.”
“I appreciate it, Jim … and the lecture. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
We shook hands and he said, “Listen.”
“What?”
He smiled. “Keep in touch, huh?”
“Sure.”
When he left Debby came over to collect his mug. “You want another one, Hank?”
I looked at my half-filled glass and pushed it away. “No thanks, Deb, I’ve had enough.”
Her smile was radiant as she took my mug and said, “Good. How about a midnight snack?”
“That sounds great. Thanks.”
She cleaned both glasses and put them away Then she disappeared into the kitchen, which had been dark. I saw the light go on as she set about to prepare my midnight snack. I checked my watch. My midnight plus thirty snack. I figured I’d eat and then follow Diver’s example and go home.
“Where’s your friend?” she asked as she brought out some warmed stew. Her stew — or Rosellen’s, there wasn’t that much difference — had gotten to be my favorite dish.
“Which one?” I asked back.
“The lady jockey.”
“Oh. Uh, she left for California, yesterday, I think. Didn’t even say good-bye. Guess she didn’t like the way they rode here in New York.”
I hadn’t spoken to Brandy, or seen her, since that night at Debby’s, when she had stormed out. I had heard around the track that she was heading back to the coast. I’d left the message with my service for her, in case she wanted to say good-bye, in case she had decided not to go.
But the message may have defeated its purpose. Leaving her word that I would be found at Debby’s, that was just stoking her fire again.
Maybe I didn’t really want to see her again. Maybe I wanted her to go back to California.
Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted.
I pushed thoughts of Brandy aside and devoted my attention to Debby’s stew. Debby knew to leave well enough alone.
When I finished the stew and she had taken the bowl and cleaned it I said, “I’m going to call it a night, Deb.”
“I think I will, too,” she said, staring me right in the eye. We were the only two people in the place. She dimmed the lights and took off her apron. We went around and collected the glasses off the tables and put them behind the bar.
That’s where we were when she said, “You know, you never gave it back to me.”
“What?” I asked her.
We were close together and, that close up, she was overpowering. I took her in my arms and kissed her, and she kissed me right back.
“I wondered how long it would take you to do that,” she told me.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” I told her lamely.
“I know, “she said, and pushed my arms from around her. “Don’t let this play on your mind, though, Hank. I would like to be friends with you — close friends, perhaps — but only friends. I’m not ready for anything else. Friendships shouldn’t play on people’s minds. They should be shared, and enjoyed.”
Honestly. I hadn’t come across that too much this past week. Even Brandy wasn’t fully honest about her feelings. If she had been maybe she wouldn’t have left.
In fact, if I had been honest, maybe she wouldn’t have left.
“Anyway, you never gave it back,” she continued, as if we’d never embraced.
“Given what back?” I asked.
“My television guide. I hadn’t done the puzzle yet.”
I stepped back and slapped my forehead with my palm.
“I forgot,” I admitted. “You don’t seem like the crossword puzzle type.”
“Are you any good at crossword puzzles?” she asked.
“I’ve got a fairly large vocabulary,” I told her, which wasn’t answering the question.
“Where is it now?” she asked.
“What?”
“The book, Hank. Where’s the book?”
“Oh, yeah, the book. It’s, uh, up at my place.”
She linked her arm through mine and suggested, “Why don’t we work on the puzzle together.”
“Why not?”
We closed up the place and went up to my apartment.
You know what?
We really did work on that puzzle.