I slept terribly that night, fitfully—little forty-minute naps filled with troubling dreams that had me coming to in a sweat in my overheated bedroom. At three a.m., after my fourth time waking up, I got out of bed and opened the window. It was only a couple of weeks until Christmas, but even at that time of night it felt like fifty degrees out.
When our Russian landlord bought the building about five years ago, he moved into a first-floor apartment and was his own super. Heat and hot water were always adequate, and he was a pleasant-enough guy, even though he spoke virtually no English and when his wife made Sunday dinner it smelled like they were stewing their garbage. Last year they had a kid and bought a house on Long Island. He hired a super, and now we only saw him every couple of months when he came to check on the building. The new guy was a retired longshoreman from the neighborhood, whom my father had known for years. He was the nicest guy in the world, but Christ, did he cook us all winter. He must have loaded ships in the Sahara. On a night like this, when he really could have shut the furnace down altogether, it must have been eighty-five in my room. Opening my window did little good without cross-ventilation, so I went through the apartment and hit the kitchen window too, then left my bedroom door open. It gave me the slightest breeze.
I lay back down, and though I didn’t feel like sleeping, I dropped right off again. Although I’d gone to bed worried about my father, and was still feeling guilty and frightened, I didn’t dream about any of it. I’d half expected nightmares of Edward coming through my window like Leatherface or Jason.
What I dreamed about was my mother. She was sick, like she’d been in the hospital, but she was at home with us. She lay in the mechanical bed, with the monitors all around and tubes hooked up to her arms and nose, and two that snaked under her sheets that I’d never asked about. The hospital room was our living room. I was in my bedroom. She was calling for my father. I went to the doorway and looked at her. The machines were shutting down, and all the fluid in the tubes was backing up and choking her. Her wrists were tied down to the rails at the side of the bed, so she wouldn’t rip anything out when the morphine made her delirious. She struggled, but couldn’t move. The fluid was overflowing now, spilling on the sheets and running off the bed onto the floor. She kept calling to my father, then started choking and gurgling. I didn’t know where he was, if he was in his room, if he was home. I was afraid to go to her. I couldn’t cross the living room because she would see me. There wasn’t anything I could do to help. I stood in the doorway and watched her flail and choke. I started to tremble. I was still shaking when I woke up.
I didn’t want to look out past my room, but my bladder wrestled with my neuroses, and as with all such battles, the body can up the ante until it isn’t much of a contest. When I went to piss, the living room looked reassuringly faded and depressing. I knew I was done sleeping for the night. I showered and dressed, and looked in on my father. He was out like a light, and my moving about had not disturbed him. Once he settled in, Christ himself would have been hard-pressed to wake my old man before his internal alarm popped him up in the morning.
I went out, got in my car, and drove down to Shore Road. I stopped at a 24-hour deli on Colonial Road and bought a buttered roll and coffee. When I ordered, the Arab behind the counter looked at me like I’d asked to have sex with his sister. I wanted to watch the sun come up over the Narrows, but I was a little too early and a lot too hyper to sit still for long. The sky was just beginning to lighten when I got back in the car.
I drove along the shore until the street turned inland by the border of Sunset Park, then continued down through the desolate industrial stretch of Second Avenue where, a few hours earlier, Italians from North Williamsburgh and Bensonhurst, and local Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, got together for their only social interaction besides drug-dealing: the nightly drag races. There was no sign of any action by twilight, but the piles of beer cans and other debris along the curb made the place look like some weird urban Woodstock.
At Hamilton Avenue I turned right and followed Third to Atlantic, through the Wycoff and Gowanus projects, and took the streets onto the bridge. It was a little past peak sunrise, but the view going over the Brooklyn Bridge was spectacular, and I didn’t feel bad about not being able to sit still at the shore.
I came off the bridge directly onto the FDR Drive and exited at Houston Street. I was in the East Village in five minutes and parked across from Kathy Popovich’s house about ninety seconds later. I must have known I was heading there, but I hadn’t really let myself think about it. I realized that it was the second time that I’d gone to see her when I was feeling restless, uncomfortable with myself. Was this a natural instinct, to seek out someone smart, interesting, and understanding, or was I running away, looking to escape? A good argument could be made either way. I locked up the car and walked a block west to First Avenue for another cup of coffee. It was barely seven o’clock, and I figured I couldn’t try to roust her for at least an hour. I knew she had classes later, but I didn’t know if she had a job or if she’d been out on a date. I didn’t want to consider that there might be someone up there with her.
I’d bought a newspaper to look at while I had my coffee, but as was often the case, I could summon absolutely no interest in the vast majority of the stories. If there was a lurid murder, or a little girl kidnapped, or an especially spectacular robbery had been pulled off somewhere, I’d be intrigued. But the notion that anyone could get excited about the economy of Mexico, or North Korean students rioting, was pretty much beyond me. In fact, I frequently thought that interest in world news was like listening to modern jazz—an Emperor’s new clothes thing, where everyone pretends to understand and no one has the balls to say it’s just noise.
I thought about the last time I’d seen Kathy, and how I figured that would be the end of it. I still couldn’t see it going anywhere, but there was little point in denying that I was at least a bit hung-up on her. That may have been exacerbated by how fucked-up the rest of my life had been lately, but I didn’t think so. I would have been drawn to her even under comparatively normal circumstances. I’d known girls like her in the past, but there hadn’t been any substance behind their screwball artist facades. I almost got the impression that Kathy played down her intelligence.
At eight o’clock I decided to stop writing her resume in my head before I intimidated myself right back over the bridge. I’d have the rest of my life to hide under the covers, and probably would. Now was the time to be charming.
I started to head for her building, but thought better of it and walked back to a phone booth on First. She picked up on the fourth ring, sounding like I’d awakened her. I wasn’t off to a sterling start. I had to give her my name twice before it registered.
“Mike,” she said, “Jesus Christ. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock. Did I call too early?”
“Too early for what? Are you all right? You’re never at school anymore, and I haven’t heard from you since you practically ran out of here last week. Now you call in the middle of the night.”
This wasn’t good. I found myself backpedaling from jump. Thank God I hadn’t just rung the bell. “I’m sorry I’m disturbing you so early,” I said. “I forget that everyone doesn’t keep to the same schedule as me. I’ll call you at a more reasonable hour.”
She started to agree, then hesitated. “Wait,” she said. “Wait a minute. It doesn’t matter. I’m awake now anyway. I’m not going back to sleep. What’s up?”
“Well...” I suddenly wished she’d let me get off the phone and call her back some other time. I felt like I was under pressure to make this compelling. “Nothing’s up, really. I just wanted to talk to you. You told me to keep in touch.”
“Uh-huh. Great sense of timing. Are you on a pay phone?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure that nothing’s wrong?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m fine. Look, I’m sorry about the hour. Sometimes I act first and think later. I can let you rest and call later.”
“Mike, I doubt that you ever act without thinking first. Where are you?”
“I’m in Manhattan. I had an early run at work, and I figured I’d call you before I headed back.”
“Are you near here?” she asked.
“On your corner.”
“Really. That’s wonderful. I haven’t actually been stalked since I moved to New York, and I was starting to think there was something wrong with me.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been busy or I would have been here sooner, but it’s going to be a very passive stalking. I’ll be polite when I jump out from between parked cars.”
“I’m sure. If you want to come up, ring the bell and I’ll buzz you in. We’ll have some coffee. But I warn you—you’re about to see me first thing in the morning. It will be the scariest moment of your life.” She laughed and hung up.
“If only you knew,” I said to the dial tone.
I figured that Kathy first thing in the morning actually wouldn’t be an awful sight at all, though her building—in fact the whole neighborhood, even this early—was a quaint spin through hell. I wasn’t sure if the stench was actually stronger in her hall, or if I was just more sensitive to it in the morning. On the second-floor landing I passed a bum sleeping off some nightmarish bargain-basement hangover. By the time I reached the fourth floor, I felt like joining him for a nap.
When Kathy opened the door my suspicions were confirmed. She didn’t quite look perfect, but not that far off. She wore jeans, and a baggy t-shirt that I was sure she used as a nightshirt. She looked pleasantly disheveled—no makeup, jeans hastily pulled on—but she’d combed her hair. She was barefoot, and between that and the faded blue denim, she looked like a different person. Like the one I’d gotten a glimpse of the other night. The one who didn’t always dress in black. I wondered if this Kathy lived inside the other one, and how much of her I’d been allowed to see. How much more there might be yet to discover. The thought that she might put up fronts to hide behind was very appealing to me. It made me feel closer to her.
“It’s good to see you,” I said.
She studied me in the doorway. “You’d be a terrible stalker,” she said. “You’re wheezing too loudly. People would hear you a mile away. Perhaps you should take better care of yourself.”
“Perhaps you should invite me in before my feelings are hurt and I abandon the stalking trade entirely.”
“Heaven forbid,” she said. “Come in.”
Kathy turned and walked into the apartment, leaving me to follow her. I thought again about how comfortably attractive she looked, and how she hadn’t been awake very long. Gina, by contrast, was one of those high maintenance girls who was never off-duty and could only look stunning after hours of work.
Whatever Kathy’s sleeping arrangements had been, everything was neatly put away, and the sofa was just a sofa. I noticed again how old-fashioned the place looked, more strikingly so in the light of day. The sunlight that streamed in every window gave the apartment a yellowed, faded look. I didn’t find it at all depressing. In fact, I thought it was warm, almost homey. I’d probably be pushing my luck if I asked Kathy to bake some cookies.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said from the kitchen area. She was filling a coffeepot at the sink.
I sat on the couch and picked up a flier from the coffee table. It was just one side of a single page that had been crudely mimeographed. It featured a black-and-white photo of a nude woman facing the camera and glaring defiantly. One foot was in what looked like a pail of water; the other was in a very high, spike-heeled pump. Her hands were at her sides, in fists, and one was holding the end of an exposed electrical wire. Written across her breasts in lipstick or light marker was the phrase, “Of course it hurts.” The photo was captioned “Forever Victims,” and under the picture, in slightly smaller print: “An Evening of In-Your-Face-Angst with Melissa Livingstone.” There was a small note at the bottom of the page listing three or four “guerrilla theater” locations and dates. One of them was last night.
“Are you familiar with her?” Kathy asked, walking over with two empty white china mugs. When she placed them on the table, she scooped up two clear glass cups and saucers that I hadn’t noticed until she moved them.
I felt that tug in my gut again and the instant hot flush of jealousy. In the space of a few seconds I thought about who she’d had coffee with, where they’d gone before that, how long she’d allowed him to stay, whether they’d slept together, and why the fuck he’d gotten a cup and saucer while I was having a plain chipped mug like you’d give an encyclopedia salesman.
I took a few deep breaths and was smart enough not to speak until I got it together. You have no goddamn claim on this girl, I said over and over to myself. Don’t screw up now.
“I’m not familiar with her at all,” I said. “I was just trying to figure out if she sings, paints, or just sets herself on fire.”
“She’s a performance artist.”
“So it’s the setting-yourself-on-fire thing.”
“How very open-minded,” Kathy said. “Actually, she was pretty bad. I mean, I think art should be provocative, but she doesn’t have much going for her once you get beyond the shock. But I’ve seen a number of performance artists recently whose pieces were well-done and interesting.” “Does she perform naked?” I asked, looking at the flier again.
“Some of the time. Last night a couple of people sort of heckled her for a few minutes. She screamed at them to go back to New Jersey.”
“Oh good,” I said. “Someone else from Kansas telling people they’re stupid because they live six miles from here.”
“You weren’t even there. You’re not from New Jersey. Is there anything you aren’t defensive about?”
I thought for a moment. “No,” I said.
She smiled. “It’s good that you’re aware of it.”
Kathy went back over to the stove and retrieved the coffeepot. She sat with me and talked for a while about trivial happenings in and out of classes at school. I’d been trying to come up with a plausible story for when she would begin with the real questions, but nothing credible was coming to me. I wondered if a version of the injured dog story from my father’s lawyer would fly. Kathy must have read my mind.
“I’m running out of mundane things to talk about,” she said. “And I get the feeling you’re dreading that I’ll ask you something. It’s making me very tense. You called me at eight o’clock and woke me up. You’re sitting on my couch having coffee. I’d really like to know what’s up with you.”
“I’m not quite ready to talk about it,” I said.
“It’s my couch,” she said. “My coffee. It was my sleep.”
“I know.” I turned my head and looked out the window. Across the street was an abandoned building with sheets of tin over the windows. Someone had painted a half-drawn shade on the top half and a flower in a pot on the bottom, as though it sat on the sill. A meaningless gesture in terms of how the building looked, but I thought it was nice. If this was my neighborhood, and I was old, I wondered if I’d go around doing something like that. “I’m going to need a few days,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The last couple of weeks have been very—I don’t know—rough, I guess. A lot of changes. A lot of weird shit. I think it’s over now. But I need a little time to let the dust settle and make sure that everything is all right. If you can bear with me, I’ll tell you what I can soon.”
“A lot of people go through changes,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world, even though it always seems like it at the time. If you’re thinking about leaving school, maybe you should put off a decision like that until,” she shrugged, “as you say, the dust settles.”
“A lot of people go through changes,” I said. “They have a hard time at school, or a teacher has it in for them, or their boss does. Or their parents get divorced. If it was like that I would have told you already. I’m not blowing you off. Give me a few days and ask me whatever you want.”
“Even about girlfriends?”
“Even about boyfriends. Even about livestock.”
“I always suspected that was what it was like late at night out on the prairies of Brooklyn. Okay, you can be mysterious for now. But can you tell me why you’re really here this morning?”
“I’m not sure myself. I felt like I needed to see you. Right away.”
“I see,” she said. “Was there some deep spiritual reason for this, or were the livestock just busy?”
“Both,” I said. “I swear I don’t know. I like you; I like your company. I also think you’re extremely attractive. But right this minute? Beats the hell out of me. Maybe I see you as my salvation.”
“Then you’re in much more trouble than I suspected,” she said, as she rose from the couch and went to the kitchen. When she was seated again and had refilled her cup she looked at her watch. “My alarm would be going off just about now if you hadn’t called. I don’t give myself much downtime, because I grab all the sleep I can. What I’m saying is that I’ll be throwing you out soon.”
“Sure,” I said. “No problem. I did barge in on you. So how soon should I come back? An hour? Two?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“How about tonight?”
“I don’t know. No. I have plans tonight.”
“A date?”
“A friend. Dinner.”
“I could meet you after dinner. Desert. Coffee. Drinks.”
“You’re pushing,” she said. “I don’t know what time will be convenient. Or if tonight is good at all. Besides, you don’t have a really good track record. You didn’t show up for the first date, and left in the middle of the second.”
“I understand how you feel, but from my perspective that puts me a date and a half behind where I should be. I’m trying to regain lost ground.”
“Starting tonight?”
“Well, starting in ten minutes was what I was thinking, but I can be flexible.”
Kathy looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused. That ambivalence was better than I expected and more than I knew I deserved, so I practiced keeping my mouth shut and hoped I looked sincere. She glanced at her watch again. “Are you familiar with Bradley’s? It’s a jazz bar on University Place.”
“No,” I said. “But I’m sure I can find it.”
“Okay. Do you want to meet me there at ten tonight?”
“I’d love to.”
“Good,” she said. “Now get out. If I don’t start to get myself together soon I’m going to feel rushed and hassled all day.”
I drained the last of my coffee and stood. I sensed that I was in the middle of one of those moments in life that I would look back on later, wondering why I hadn’t left well enough alone. I decided to try that this time. Kathy walked me to the door, and I apologized about three more times for waking her up. She gave me a brief kiss at the doorway.
“When I finally figure out who you are,” she said, “you’d better be worth it.”
“Maybe the mystery is intriguing,” I offered.
“The mystery,” she said as she closed the door, “is a pain in the ass.”
I’d been a little worried about someone fucking with my car on Kathy’s block, but when I stepped out onto the street I was depressed to see how well it blended in with its surroundings. I drove away before anyone had a chance to make the same observation about me.
My father was out when I got home. It was still early and I figured he was making his rounds. As I sat in the apartment alone, the malaise I’d been able to shrug off for a while settled in on me again.
The short time I had spent with Kathy felt like a vacation, or what I’d always assumed a vacation would feel like. The longest trip I’d ever taken with my family had been a three-day weekend at a beach house on Montauk, back when we first learned my mother was sick. It hadn’t been very restful, but it was all my father could swing. He made good money with the numbers, but there was no such thing as a day off. I sometimes thought that he’d set his life up like that—tied himself to the neighborhood so there would be no danger of being lured away. I wondered for the first time if maybe I hadn’t been doing the same thing when I accepted the job with Tony.
It was something that I’d seen all my life, and had been consciously aware of since I was about ten. I’d always told myself that I was too smart to get involved in any of it, even on as low and stable a level as my father had. It had seemed to me that hooking up with the wiseguys was like becoming an actor. About one percent makes it big and everybody else hangs around doing menial embarrassing jobs waiting for the break that never comes. And as with acting, there was never any lack of enthusiastic wannabees. I used to think my friends and classmates were unique, but I knew better now. Everything worked today the way it had when I was sixteen, and, I assumed, when my father was sixteen. It probably worked the same way five hundred years ago when there were Indians hanging out on the corner where the fruit store is.
Around junior or senior year in high school, the first couple of guys drop out. Most get full-time jobs. The video store, a supermarket, or driving a tow truck. One or two just hang around. They begin dressing a little older than their age. A guy who’s eighteen and starts wearing slacks and a sports jacket to hang out in the candy store sort of stands out. It was, I finally realized, a ritual not unlike shaping-up down at the Fulton fish market, where guys stand around all night with hooks slung over their shoulders until some vendor or driver is shorthanded enough to call them over. They can usually pick up seventy-five dollars for a night’s work, and go home with a couple of pounds of nice fish.
The guy in the store just waits to get noticed. He can’t hang around the social club because he’s not old enough and he doesn’t have any connections yet, so the old-timers will just heap abuse on him and drive him out; but sooner or later some low-level wiseguy with a scheme will need an extra hand. In his dreams it’s to be a wheelman or, even better, part of a credit card or insurance scam. It never works out that way. After half a year of dressing like Bogart and perfecting a steely stare in the mirror over the soda fountain, it’s usually: Hide in the men’s room at Bloomingdale’s, wait until an hour after closing, then grab an armload of good leather jackets and hit the fire exit on Fifty-ninth Street. Somebody’s waiting in a van down the block, and if he makes it that far, he probably gets away. For his trouble, for heisting maybe five thousand dollars retail merchandise, the wiseguy throws him two hundred bucks. And of course now he has bragging rights; he’s pulled a job. There are a million variations on it.
All goes well the first few times, until the stupid bastard gets caught. In the beginning that’s no big deal either because, it’s New York after all, and no one goes to jail here. But after the third or fourth arrest, the wiseguy only throws him a hundred bucks, and if he doesn’t like it, well, fuck him, because, hey pal, take a look at that record, who the fuck’s gonna hire you? So he takes the hundred, does a couple more small jobs, gets caught one or two more times, and finally ends up with six months or so off the street.
And that’s it. He doesn’t hear from the wiseguys anymore because there’s always a new kid in the candy store who’s never been pinched and every security guard and store detective in Manhattan doesn’t know his face. So the guy with eight or ten arrests and a rap sheet that includes city time keeps hanging around, because, in fact, who the fuck is gonna hire him. And eventually the wiseguy that hooked him up in the first place, or someone just like him, will, out of the goodness of his heart, find something for the poor guy to do, like throw a windbreaker over someone’s head and break his nose for fifty dollars. Or have him lift car radios or batteries at ten bucks a pop. Try getting caught doing that a few times and see where your friends are. Eventually even his family turns away in embarrassment. The same guy is hanging in the candy store every morning, but he doesn’t bother dressing up anymore, and just after noon he drifts over to Peggy’s or one of the other joints and starts drinking with the old men and the other losers. He’s probably picked up a couple of jailhouse tattoos—at the very least a little cross between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand—and he starts to look older than he should.
As much as I knew that in no sense had anything like that happened to me, I still felt a little bit like one of those guys. I’d agreed to work for Tony because of my father, and because I was afraid that he was right about it looking like I was running away if I didn’t. But, deep down, was there some little piece of me that harbored thoughts of being a big shot, in contention someday to be made?
I was still feeling restless, and it would be a few hours until my father got back, longer if he hung around anywhere for a couple of pops. I was hoping he’d come straight home, and I wondered how the side of his face looked today. A shiver went through me as I recalled the previous day’s events. For an instant I felt paralyzed with fear, certain that Todd and Edward would be back to kill both me and my father. It passed as quickly as it came, and when I was rational I knew that, as my father had said, the odds were it was over.
Thinking of Edward got me dwelling on Nicky, and the night he’d been killed. Then I thought of Louise, and remembered Joey shrinking back behind the corner, waiting until she’d gone down the block before he would move. I had intended to look her up and see how she was getting along.
I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I stood staring for a minute, and it dawned on me I had no idea why I’d gone there. It was one of the few adolescent things I still did that drove my father crazy. I’d look into the open fridge, or a kitchen cabinet, or even a clothes closet, and just go into brainlock, with no clue as to what I was after. I closed the door, grateful that he hadn’t been there to see me, and decided to go out. I was obviously too antsy to hang around and pretend to watch TV.
When I got downstairs I decided to see about Louise. It was either that or stop in on Gina, and I wasn’t up to having that kind of day. The feeling that it was over between us had been growing for me, but she remained oblivious. In my typically responsible way, I figured I could duck the whole thing by seeing her less and less often, until she got the hint. Realistically, there was no way that was going to happen. If I went off for five years, she’d scream blue murder when I returned, then go back to picking out our wallpaper. I would ultimately have to do something decisive, and right now that made checking on Louise look pretty good.
I drove to the apartment she’d shared with Shades. It had been Nicky’s place first, and his had been the only name on the bell. The listing for their apartment now read Facchetti, and although I didn’t remember Louise’s last name, I was sure that wasn’t it. Louise was Colombian, and her surname was distinctly Hispanic. I rang the bell anyway. There was no answer. After trying the super’s bell with the same result, I turned to leave.
A tiny ancient woman with startlingly white hair approached the building, pulling a shopping cart full of laundry. She was wearing a faded housedress that displayed a sunburst surrounded by rainbow colors, white sweatsocks with red trim, and navy canvas sneakers with a hole cut in one to accommodate a very impressive bunion. I doubted she weighed more than seventy pounds. I stepped outside and held the door for her, but she stopped at the bottom of the stoop and didn’t attempt to go up the steps. I couldn’t imagine that she’d be able to drag the cart up.
“You don’t live here,” she said, regarding me carefully, one eye opened much wider than the other. “Who you want?”
“I’m looking for a girl named Louise,” I said. “She used to live here with a guy named Nicky. They were in apartment 3B.”
“3B’s new people,” she said. “Sicilians. Right off the boat.”
“I figured she moved,” I said. “I was wondering if you might know where.”
“Dark as niggers,” she said.
“What?”
“The new people. Dark as the ace of spades.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Do you know when the super’s going to be around?”
“You looking for that girl got knocked up by the bum,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yes, that’s her. Louise. She’s pregnant.”
“Nice girl,” she said. “Always helped me with my bags. Ran to the store for a quart of milk if I needed it. She wouldn’t take no tip, just enough for the milk. Now she’s gone, no one offers.”
“I’d be glad to give you a hand with the cart,” I said.
She nodded and stepped back. When I took the handle she scooted around me and up the stone steps much faster than I would have thought possible. She opened and held the outside and vestibule doors, then led the way to a second-floor apartment and opened that door as well.
She stood in the doorway and watched me approach her. She looked impatient. The cart must have weighed as much as she did. I was amazed that she was even able to pull it on flat ground; I was exhausted from lugging it up one flight.
“Do you know where Louise moved to?” I asked.
“Why you want to know?”
“I’m a friend. I was a friend of her boyfriend.”
“The bum. She threw him out. Was his place, but she threw him out.” She giggled like a kid. “Then the landlord threw her out cause it ain’t her place an’ he gets twice the rent from the wops off the boat. Dark as niggers. He’d love to throw me out, cause I don’t pay next to nothing, but he’s gotta live with me till I die. Rent control. Thirty-six years.”
My eyes were starting to cross. “Do you know where she moved? I just want to see if she’s all right, if she needs anything, how she’s doing.”
“Behind the hospital,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Behind the hospital. The big one by the fort.”
“Victory Memorial?” I said. “Over by Fort Hamilton? She moved over there? Do you have her address, or would the super have it?”
“Super doesn’t know shit. Didn’t know she moved till I told him. She went in the middle of the night.” She giggled again. “She stuck him for some money cause he was throwing her out.”
“The super?”
“No. The landlord.” She glared at me like I hadn’t been paying attention. When she squinted, even a little, she looked just like Popeye. “I don’t know an address. Not like I visit anyone.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.” I started to leave, then turned back toward her as she hauled the cart over her doorstep. “What would you have done if I wasn’t there to give you a hand?”
She looked at me blankly for a moment. “Sicily’s only forty miles from Africa,” she said, nodding. “Don’t think some of ‘em didn’t take a swim.” She pulled the cart inside and closed the door.
I went back out, but I didn’t see anyone else, and I figured I probably wouldn’t find anyone less loony who would be as cooperative, so I called it quits. I knew something, anyway. There was only one row of houses behind Victory Memorial, and they were all one-family, so if Louise was back there she probably had a basement rental. I’d check it out tomorrow. Right now I wanted to eat and take a nap, then get ready to shoot for a whole date with Kathy, whatever that would entail. On the way home I thought about Sicilian pizza and why it was square. I really should have asked.