Crooked (14 page)

“Or is she your stash?”

Nicholas rolled his eyes. “I’m not into buying any real estate.”

“Say what?”

“Women are like real estate, H. Maureen is a cabin in the woods—always there, secluded, you know you can always go there but would never think of living there.”

“And I heard you an’ Mel were…”

Nicholas shook his head. “She’s the beach place. Great location, only good when it’s sunny, but you never know when a hurricane—in this case a dependable man and dad-type—will wash it away. So it’s not wise to invest in the beach house.”

“Met her kid once, on the street.” H smiled. “Cute. Mini Mel.”

Nicholas was hitting his stride.

“Single mothers, they’re like freestanding wood-frame houses, lotta shifting in the structure makes them suspect. Hips displaced from childbirth, most of them have lost their wiggle, both figuratively and literally. And then there’s the wrinkles of consternation knit perpetually into their brows from parenting.”

“My man, you have given this some thought, haven’t you?” H was chuckling.

Nicholas slid out of the booth and reached for his coat.

“But the ones you have to be really careful of are the ones that look too good to be true.”

“Those are the best kind!” H stood, finishing his drink.

“I’m talking about women a little older. Around forty. You have to ask, if they’re so perfect, why are they still single? Some turn out to be haunted houses—one night’s stay and you run screaming. ‘Trust issues’ and paranoia come out of nowhere, ghosts from past relationships. Others turn out to be fixer-uppers with so many hidden emotional problems, and possibly physical ones, that you realize you might as well have torn the house down and started over. Or bought another house entirely. Let’s go.”

“You are one sick monkey, Nicholas.” H laughed, following him to the door. “So what kind of house are you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“I’m a fourth-floor walk-up. Not too expensive, good exercise, breezy, sunny, don’t want to lug too much furniture up there. Not the kind of place where you raise a family. Most women get tired of climbing the stairs.”

C h a p t e r                           2 0

 
A
ngie opened the door and her chin dropped.

Garth stopped dead in his tracks in the bedroom doorway, beer bottle in hand.

“Ah, good ol’ Sunday dinner!” Nicholas chimed, giving Angie a peck on the cheek. “Mel, this is Angie, and that over there is my brother, Garth.”

Nicholas flashed a smile at his brother. Yup, Garth was in his usual attire: white shirt, sport jacket, chinos, sneakers. Wild blond hair barely held in by gel. How could a guy who looked like some high school drama coach be his brother?

“I’m Dottie!” The little girl burst from her mother’s side and ran pell-mell to Garth. “Where’s the tookie tookie?”

Angie mechanically tucked some of her short blond hair behind one ear uncertainly.

“Hi, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Mel took Angie’s hand, then smiled at Garth. “Wow. You have quite a place here.”

Garth stared down at the little girl, whose excited black orbs were ogling him. He looked behind him as though retracing his steps might erase this mirage.

Dottie threw her hands out and stamped a foot. “Well?”

“Dottie!” Mel glided forward and put her hands on Dottie’s shoulders. “That’s not polite. Hi, Garth, I’m Mel. She’s just excited to see the bird.”

Garth shook her hand, blinking. “Hi. Nicholas has told me so much about you.” Polite, but inaccurate.

“Has he?” Mel was obviously trying to contain her surprise.

Dottie’s eyes drifted from Garth, refocusing. She twirled. Taxidermy was everywhere. The ceiling was filled with birds, wings spread: eagle, owl, pelican, ducks, goose, dove, turkey, hawk, flamingo…The walls were covered in heads, most with horns: elk, deer, moose, antelopes of every description. On low bookcases were the smaller mammals: beaver, squirrels, badger, woodchuck, platypus, mink, mongoose, weasel, martin, otter, bobcat, lynx, porcupine, fox. And guarding the floor around the walls were larger full-body mounts: coyote, wolverine, wolf, tapir, wild pig, dik-dik.

“A lion!” she squealed, dashing over to a male African lion mount. She stared with wonder into its open, befanged maw. Dottie had fallen through the looking glass. “Way cool!”

Garth shot Nicholas a “what are you up to now” look, then turned his attention back to Dottie.

“That’s Fred the Second. Got him just recently.”

“Does Fred bite?” She held out a finger toward the lion’s mouth, ready to pull it away in case he snapped at her.

“Fred’s biting days are long gone. You can touch his mouth.”

Her hand drew close to the fangs but pulled away.

“Look.” Garth reached down and put his whole fist in Fred’s mouth.

“Do you live here?” She was still staring at Fred’s mouth.

“Yes, Angie and I live here.”

“Way cool! Can I live here too?”

Nicholas leaned in to Angie. “Do you guys have a toucan, or some other exotic bird? I promised her she’d get to see a tookie tookie bird.”

“Nicholas, you didn’t say you were bringing anyone,” she whispered.

“That’s why I moved it up to five. Dottie has to be in bed by eight.”

“In bed by eight, huh?” She eyed him suspiciously.

“Should we leave?”

“No, of course not, it’s just that…”

“They don’t eat much.”

“It’s not that, idjit, we have plenty, but…”

“You must have a tookie tookie bird here somewhere…Dottie would be real disappointed if you didn’t.”

“I see, a tookie tookie bird.” She squinted at him. “You’re up to something, Nicholas, aren’t you?”

“Me?”

She let a few beats pass, then raised her eyebrows. “Be careful, Nicholas. It could backfire.”

Angie turned from him to Garth. “Garth, you want to offer our guests something to drink? I have to go in back a minute.”

“Sure, sure…wine, beer, or”—Garth gestured to Nicholas—“scotch?”

“Wine would be great.” Mel smiled, looking a little nervously at Nicholas.

“I’ll have a scotch,” Dottie said absently, transfixed by the lion. “That’s what Nicky always has.”

Nicholas followed Garth behind the counter as Mel tried to draw Dottie’s attention to the other animals. The apartment had once been a soda shop. It had a checkered tile floor, and one side of the room was dominated by a long black bar.

“OK, Nicholas: is she, like, your girlfriend?” Garth whispered.

“She’s a girl and she’s a friend, so I guess that makes her a girlfriend,” Nicholas whispered back.

“And the little girl, Dottie…she’s not…”

“No, she’s not mine. Mel is a widow. Poor bastard bought it in a motorcycle accident just after Dottie was born. Mel’s in computers, does background work for me.”

“You know, Nicholas, you’re like Tom Terrific.”

“Tom who?”

“The old cartoon show? You remember the tookie tookie bird but you don’t remember Tom Terrific? Tom was a smart-ass like you who could change himself into something else. Anything else. But even if he was a toaster he had that same hat on, so you knew it was Tom, even if other characters in the cartoon were fooled.”

Nicholas was mildly exasperated. “Garth, I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll bet you do.” Garth poured two glasses of wine, glancing over his shoulder at Mel and Dottie. “Cute, both of them. Very.”

“I know.” Nicholas had found the scotch and a glass. “Got any juice for Dottie?”

“Apple OK? I think we have some concentrate.”

“Perfect. Looks like scotch.” Indeed, Nicholas thought. No doubt this Sunday dinner would have the desired effect. Leave in two hours or so, put Dottie to bed, fool around with Mel for a while, leave in time to grab the rental car and make his two appointments on Randall’s Island. One with BB at eleven for
Day After Day
, the other at midnight with Maureen to finger Barney. “You give any thought to that appraising job?”

“I’ve got work.”

“This pays well, Garth. Travel. Expenses. It’d mix things up a bit. Try it. If you don’t like it, then don’t take any more work.”

“Who is this for again?”

“Big insurance companies. They’re loaded. Just say the word and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.”

A door slammed in the back, and from behind a curtain a little wiry man with graying hair and a sharp goatee burst into the room. He was wearing a belted boxy sport coat with absurdly large shoulder pads.

“Allo, I ready! Nicholas, we must drink—” He stopped, thunderstruck, as though Mel and Dottie were an apparition from heaven itself. “My Gott! Nicholas! Eetz very nice! You not tell to me you have vooman! And little girl, to be pretty!”

“Mommie, what’s wrong with him?” Dottie stared up suspiciously.

“You must be Otto.” Mel held out a hand. Nicholas had told her about Garth and Angie’s eccentric Russian handyman. “I’m Mel, and this is Dottie.”

Otto grasped her hand and held it to his chest. “You go to beach? Very nice at beach.”

“Otto!” Garth scolded.

“Beach to go very, very pretty veemin,” Otto protested. “Mal is very pretty, so beach to must go to be nekked.”

“Mel, don’t mind him.” Nicholas scrunched his face dismissively. Good, she was getting the full freak show. “Just don’t go to any nude beaches.”

“Nude beaches?” Mel was stumped.

“Ah!” Otto gasped and dropped to his knees to get a better look at Dottie, who promptly hid behind her mother’s legs. “Dah-tay! Like small deer with spots come from mother’s bottom, gentle big eyes of her. Not to be afraid of Otto! Look! I do very funny, yes?” Otto proceeded to do a trick where he dislocated his arm and twisted it behind his head at a bizarre angle.

“Otto.” Garth handed Mel her wine. “I think you’re scaring her. Dottie? I have your scotch.”

A little olive hand reached around her mother and made the cup vanish.

“Who wants to see a tookie bird?” Angie emerged from the back room.

Dottie’s head peeked around Mel’s legs. Angie entered the room holding a black bird about the size of a large chicken standing on a piece of driftwood. It had a large, hooked red beak and a bunch of ridiculous curled feathers atop its head, a tizzy of sprouting question marks. While some might have called it a tookie tookie, it was commonly known as a curassow, denizen of South American jungles.

“That’s a tookie tookie?” Dottie dashed past Otto and up to Angie. “Can I hold it? Please?”

Glass of scotch tinkling with ice, Nicholas took the bird from Angie and crouched so Dottie could pet it. Mel betrayed a wistful smile.

“Do you remember the sound the tookie tookie bird makes?” Nicholas asked.

Dottie filled her tiny lungs with air:
“AW! AW! EE! EE! TOOKIE-TOOKIE!”

Angie leaned in to Garth and stage-whispered. “Who is this imposter calling himself Nicholas?”

“Tom Terrific.”

C h a p t e r                           2 1

 
B
arney leaned against a towering steel column in Astoria, Queens, watching a row house from the shadows of the subway above. The front windows were lit, the shades were up. He could see the living room clearly, filled with yellow light and people. More arrived every few minutes, greeted with hugs and kisses by a plump, elderly woman. Sunday dinner at the Griegs’.

Sure enough, a black town car pulled up to the house, and Nicasia stepped out. She stood there for a moment as the car drove off. Her hair was pulled into a long French braid. She stood looking at the house, like she was deciding something, then turned suddenly in Barney’s direction. He rolled to the other side of the column, smiling to himself. She looked great. It was all he could do not to break cover and wrap her in his arms, absorb her smile and her eyes, sink her body into his, smell her hair. Did she feel him close to her? Was that why she’d turned? If she called out his name, would the night and the shadows suddenly turn to daylight?

But he couldn’t show himself. What with Drummond and the gun and Silvi watching him from that red pickup, he didn’t dare get Nicasia involved. Oh, he’d snuck out of his house, left that red pickup parked down the block back in Pugsley’s Point. No two ways about it, those people meant to kill him. And he didn’t doubt that they would do the same to anybody else who got wind of what was going on. He didn’t want them bringing Nicasia into this. If things didn’t go as planned, they could kidnap her—or worse—as leverage against Barney.

He peered around the pillar and saw that Nicasia had turned back to the house. He watched her kiss her mother, then waited as the door closed, shutting him out in the cold, severing the beat of his heart from hers.

Chin raised, he scanned the hazy night sky, finding a flickering star, a spark of determination from the heavens.

Just a couple nights more, he hoped.
And then I’m coming home.

Nicasia hadn’t wanted to come to Sunday dinner at her folks’ place in Astoria. But with Barney missing, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She couldn’t spend all her time kayaking. As her mother used to say, “I didn’t know where you were! I was worried awful!” Funny how we became our parents.

Immersing herself in her family had seemed like the thing to do when she left Manhattan. She wasn’t so sure now as she stood on the sidewalk in front of the house where she grew up. It wasn’t exactly the quietest neighborhood, what with the elevated subway train right across the street. She turned to look up at it. She thought about how often sunlight spilled through the structure, making patterns on the living room wall. A train would come by and cause a strobe effect as the sun flashed between the cars. Nicasia had never liked the way it looked at night, when it looked like a striding giant ready to step on their house.

The stuffed grape leaves and moussaka were waiting, but she paused outside a second longer and caught her breath. She hadn’t seen anything. But she’d felt something, like a wind move right through her chest.

“My God,” she whispered, clutching her coat front. Was that Barney’s ghost she felt? Or was Barney out there somewhere thinking about her?

A tear rolled down her cheek, her dark eyes scanning the cold city sky. A star above wobbled faintly through the haze. A dim light, a faint hope.

“Barney, come home, damn you, come home.”

“Nicasia?”

She turned.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Why are you standing out there in the cold?” Her mother peered from the circle of porch light into the gloom.

Nicasia went up the walk and kissed her mother.

“Just looking.”

“Well, come in! I didn’t know where you were. I was worried awful.”

Silvi trained her binoculars on the woman getting out of the town car. Just a silhouette. She noted the license plate of the limo and the address of the house. Would Barney come out of hiding? Was this his family’s home? There was some sort of party going on inside.

No. She didn’t think so. This was most likely his girlfriend. Even better.

Fool. Barney thought he could give her the slip, but he was just another one who underestimated her. Like Drummond.

“What’s the matter, Nicholas?”

He pulled away from Mel. “What do you mean?” When a woman has a problem, she asks the man whether he has one. Amazing.

She sat up on the couch and did a quick sound check to see if she heard anything from Dottie’s room. Then she put a hand tenderly on his chest and looked up into his eyes, her face illuminated by street light from the windows. “Thanks for tonight.”

“No thanks required. It was my pleasure.” He put his hands on her hips. “Is something wrong? Did Otto freak you out?”

What the hell could be wrong? They’d done the family dinner thing, put Dottie to bed, even sang her the Tarzan song, and now Nicholas and Mel were in the clinches on the couch. Textbook.

“Nothing is wrong. But something is…different.”

Nicholas just cocked his head.

“I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s just tonight. But…we still have our clothes on. And we’ve been kissing for a long time…we’ve never kissed this long.”

“Great, let’s take our clothes off, then.” He began unbuttoning his shirt.

She rolled her eyes and smoothed his shirt across his chest. “It’s just that…you’re kissing differently.”

Flummoxed, Nicholas did his best to maintain his affable expression. It was always best not to say anything. Not until he knew what to say. This could go anywhere.

“Maybe I’m imagining it. But do you feel something for me? No, stop! I see you calculating. Just wait a second, and tell me what you truly feel.”

Minefield. To Nicholas, the man who tells a woman how he truly feels hands her a mallet with which she is liable to clonk him over the head—often. Was he to tell her that he felt like having sex? Was he to tell her he didn’t feel like formulating specific feelings for analysis? If he were candid, he’d say he felt like he liked things just the way they were, but he knew she didn’t, which was why he’d staged the whole Sunday dinner thing.

His plan had backfired, just as Angie had suggested. Somehow, Mel was starting to be able to see the shores of his island. He stood and picked up his jacket and tie.

“I guess I’d better go.”

She bowed her head. “That’s what I thought.”

“Mel, you know me well enough—I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t have what you’re looking for. I wish I did.”

Nicholas rolled the tape back. Did he just say that? Guess it sounded good.

“You know that if you or Dottie ever needed anything, I’d be here for you.” Where did that come from? Funny enough, it felt like the truth. Well, it could work. Couldn’t it? The truth? His instincts had, after all, rarely betrayed him.

“Thanks, Nicholas.” Mel put her hand over her mouth and looked toward the window. Bars on the window sliced up the street glow, casting shadows across her and the room. A police siren sounded from Seventh Avenue and faded. “Thanks for telling me the truth. I knew, for all the games that we play about you being the cad that you are, and me liking it, that there’s a decent guy under it all.”

Nicholas cleared his throat, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His instincts weren’t giving him anything. “Don’t be so sure.”

She chuckled softly, the dew of tears in her big eyes.

“OK, Nicholas. Have it your way.”

He tried to look away but couldn’t.

“I don’t want you coming around anymore. Ever.”

Nicholas had been punched before. He’d been beaten. He’d been kicked, knifed, and grazed by a bullet. He’d been prepared for those, because he’d known he was in danger. He had no idea he was in danger with Mel—not just because of the way she felt, but because of the way he suddenly felt. And the wound was a surprise that stung like no other.

He had no breath to speak even if there were something to say.

So he left.

As he hustled down the street to catch a cab, he reflexively glanced to the sky as if for divine guidance, and noticed a star’s light cutting through Manhattan’s gaze. Didn’t see that very often. So he stopped and gave it a second look.

It was moving.

He snorted and continued on his way. Just a plane headed for LaGuardia.