Death Will Help You Leave Him (8 page)

“I miss passing out and waking up at noon,” I complained. I grabbed the three mugs dangling from her fingers and held them in a cluster between both hands while she filled them.

“No, you don’t,” Jimmy said.

At the same time, Barbara said, “God, I get tired of the ambivalence stage of the change process.”

I had to laugh. “I hope you don’t tell your clients that.”

“Hell, no, I save it for you.”

“Thanks a bunch,” I said.

“Speaking of clients,” she said, “unlike you guys, I have to go to work this morning. We need to talk about what to do next to help poor Luz. We could track down some of those people we met at the funeral and get them to speak some ill of the dead, so we can figure out who the suspects are.”

“Hey, I work,” Jimmy said. “Reminds me, I have to catch a client before Hong Kong goes to bed.”

“Well, before you do,” she said, “why don’t you look up Frankie’s family? Iacone is an unusual name, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” said Jimmy, his fingers already flying. “Less than a hundred listings in the online white pages, and that’s without specifying a state.”

“What kind of Italian do you think they are?” I asked. “Sopranos Italian?”

“You watch too much TV,” Jimmy said.

“The whole country watches too much TV,” I retorted. “Is that a yes or a no?”

“Not sure.”

“The wife’s brothers looked pretty scary,” Barbara said. “The ones Vinnie warned us to steer clear of. But we shouldn’t stereotype.”

“I know, I know,” I said, “not every Italian is connected.” We knew plenty of guys in AA who got pissed off when people kidded them about the Mafia. On the other hand, Jimmy had once heard a recovering hit man qualify. “But Frankie’s dead, so somebody’s got to be a bad guy.”

“I understand it would be truly stupid to march up to Frankie’s scary relatives and start asking questions,” Barbara admitted. “At least until we know for sure they’re
not
that kind of family. That’s why I thought maybe I could approach the women. Inquiring minds want to know, but they also want to stay alive. Even if they really are Sopranoish, the women live in a different world where they can pretend to believe the ugly stuff doesn’t happen. At least, that’s how it is on TV.”

“Don’t forget the guy dealt drugs,” Jimmy said. “We all saw that other set of guys at the funeral. The ones even Vinnie wouldn’t go near. You don’t want to mess with them, and ‘you’ means all of us. They’ve never heard of Miss Marple, Barbara, and they won’t think you’re cute.”

“So how do we find out if it
was
drug related?”

“Leave it to the police,” Jimmy said.

“Listen to him, Barbara,” I said. “No fooling.” Back when I used to score from Frankie and his pals, the only reason I wasn’t scared shitless is that I went in high and came out higher. In our fucked up minds, a “good” dealer was one who’d let you sample product.

“So what
can
we do?” she said. “We can’t let Luz end up convicted of murder. It’s so unfair. She said to me, ‘It hurts so much that Frankie’s gone, and on top of that I have to worry about getting arrested for killing him.’ She’s terrified of going to prison, and I don’t blame her.”

Neither did I.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“I told her she didn’t kill him, so they can’t prove she did.”

“You watch too much
Law & Order
,” I said. “Innocent people get convicted all the time.”

“They
show
too much
Law & Order
. And that’s what Luz said.”

“So go back to whodunit,” Jimmy said. “Who apart from drug dealers had a motive?”

“Even Luz couldn’t claim that everybody loved Frankie,” Barbara said. “She couldn’t say that no one would have hurt him.”

“Shouldn’t Luz be in on this conversation?” I asked.

“Some things I’d rather not say in front of her,” Barbara said. “Like I was thinking— what about the aunts?”

“The matriarchal aunts? Now there’s a creative thought.”

“Why not? They’ve got the backbone for it. They loved Luz, and they must have hated it that she was going with a druggie.”

“Too smart not to suspect the hitting, either,” Jimmy added. “Not that Luz would thank you for fingering her aunts.”

“So if we investigate, we’ll be able to rule them out. How about the wife? Netta.”

“A pregnant woman dragged herself all the way from Brooklyn to East Harlem,” I said, “to stick a knife in the father of her children?”

“When you put it like that,” Barbara said, “it sounds unlikely. But it wouldn’t be the first time. Or maybe someone did it for her.”

“Okay, then. Who’s on your list?”

“I meant to look at the guest book at the funeral,” Barbara said. “Then Luz fell apart and we had to get her out of there. All those names and addresses wasted!”

“Now here is where you’re going to fall at my feet and adore me.” Jimmy rocked back in his chair and beamed at her. “They put up a website.”

“What?”

“A website,” Jimmy repeated. “According to Dictionary.com, ‘a set of interconnected web pages, generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a collection of information—’ ”

“Clown,” she said.

“A funeral website?” I said. “That’s creepy.”

“Why? People do wedding and bar mitzvah websites. Everybody likes to see their name in print, everybody wants to know who came. People who didn’t make it get to see the pictures. They can post messages and send the family their condolences.”

Come to think of it, it wasn’t half as creepy as the medieval tortures website.

“They have pictures?” Barbara said. “Let me see.” She squeezed herself around behind Jimmy’s chair and clung to his back so she could look.

Jimmy removed her arms from around his neck without comment. He was used to being draped in nice Jewish girl.

“Yeah, there’s an online album. Pictures going back to Frankie’s childhood.”

I squeezed in next to Barbara and looked over Jimmy’s shoulder. He zipped the mouse around and brought Iaconefuneral.com up on his twenty-eight-inch screen. He scrolled down the menu on the home page. Slideshow of family photos. Guestbook. Prayers.

“Wow, this is good. You can actually read all these names and addresses.”

“I’ll print it out,” Jimmy said. “If we cross-check the pictures and posts against the address list, we can sort a lot of these people out.”

It was weird to see Frankie looking jovial, with his arms around a slimmer Netta and the little girl and boy we’d met.

“This does not look like a guy who ever slept on the couch,” I said.

“Hey, what if one of those Brooklyn-y women was in love with Frankie?” Barbara said.

“Then wouldn’t she have been more likely to kill Luz? Or Netta?”

“Not necessarily. These things can go all different directions. We have got to get to know these people better,” Barbara said, “or we’ll never figure it out.”

“Maybe one of the women was in love with Netta,” I said.

Jimmy and Barbara looked at me, then at each other.

“Naaah,” they said simultaneously.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Not in Brooklyn.”

“Or how about this,” Barbara said. “Could another man have been in love with Luz? She never told me about anyone else, but what if it was somebody she hardly noticed? Guys you’re not attracted to don’t count.”

I winced.

“Barbara, I love you, but some thoughts are better saved for your women’s group.”

“What, you don’t want to know the secrets that lie in the heart of a woman?”

“When I do, I’ll let you know.”

“I really have to get to work,” Barbara said. She unglued herself from Jimmy and started back through the living room. “I’m going to be late as it is.”

She gathered up the empty coffee pot and mugs, a couple of books, a sheaf of papers, and her handbag.

“Oh!” She stopped dead in the center of the room, her arms full of stuff. “I just remembered. Luz knew one of the dealers. Isaac? Ezekiel? Ishmael!”

“Barbara,” Jimmy said, “these are dangerous people.”

“But if we’re careful— I mean
really
careful, Jimmy— it’s just talking.”

He shook his head and spoke to me.

“She doesn’t get it.”

“She could talk to Luz about it,” I said. “If Luz wants to contact him— her life, her risk.”

“If you’re going to start calling me ‘she’,” Barbara said, “I’m outa here.”

“Give me a kiss first, pumpkin,” Jimmy said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ‘she’ on you. I get scared when you don’t realize what chances you’re taking.”

She dumped the armful of stuff— on a table, not the carpet, and the mugs and pot rolled, they didn’t break— and ran back to give him a quick but fervent smooch.

“Now I really have to run.” She was almost at the door when Jimmy’s exclamation stopped her.

“Ha!”

“Something on the funeral site?”

“No,” he said. “Look at this. ‘Iacone’s Bakery. Making Brooklyn lick its lips since 1946.’ Nice website.”

“That doesn’t sound much like organized crime, does it?” Barbara said.

“Not connected, just cannoli,” I said.

“It doesn’t prove anything,” Jimmy said. “Crime families nowadays go in for legitimate businesses. They could be laundering money as they sell the biscotti. Hey, these look good.
Il pasticciotto, il bocconoto, la sfogliatella.
” He rolled the words out sonorously. “Nice pictures.”

“Show me,” Barbara said.

“What about work?”

“It’s okay if I’m late,” she said. “I’ll stay late if I have to. Hey, these look good. That settles it, this is my assignment. I’m going out to Brooklyn to that bakery. I’ll take a day off next week. I’ll schmooze with whoever works there, dig up whatever I can about the family, bring you back some pastries— everybody’s happy.”

“Our old friend Mars mentioned a couple of meetings he hits regularly,” Jimmy said. “And I got the numbers of the other rehab folks.”

“Fast worker, aren’t you,” I said.

“The two who had never gotten clean and sober before both asked me to sponsor them,” he said. “I told the woman she should find a woman sponsor, but it was fine to call me if she was afraid she’d pick up. The guy, I said I’d be glad to do it on an interim basis, and let’s see how we get along on the phone.”

Barbara kissed him on the top of his head. Cute.

“They could see right away how good you are. You have what they want.”

“Thanks, poppet, but I don’t think I’m all that special. They hear sixteen years and they think I’ve got the magic bullet, that’s all.”

Yeah, right. Sixteen years one day at a time of undiluted reality is a long, hard haul. In the small corner of my heart that’s honest and maybe even a bit humble, Jimmy is my hero.

“So you’ll cover the recovering crowd,” I said. “What about me?”

“Oh, you’re going to the meetings.” Jimmy chuckled. “It won’t hurt you to get around, see some different faces, hear new stories.”

I’d latched onto Jimmy’s home group and found a few meetings near my apartment. I’d gotten into a groove.

“Besides,” he added, “I have to put the program first. If I’m sponsoring somebody, it doesn’t feel right to milk him for information.”

Barbara drooped.

“I’m Luz’s sponsor,” she said. “I’m only trying to help her. Do you think I shouldn’t be doing this at all?”

“No, pet, I’m not taking your inventory,” he said. He grabbed her hand and smacked a couple of kisses into her palm. “You do what feels right to you. I’m only talking about myself. I’m me and you’re you, okay?”

“Ohhh,” said Barbara, bouncing back. “Is that what they’ve been trying to teach me in Al-Anon all these years?”

“When I talk to them on the phone,” Jimmy said, “I can ask what meetings they go to. I’ll do the groundwork. Then Bruce can bump into them at a meeting and make friends.”

I noticed he had no doubt I’d be willing to pump a program person for information. I didn’t mind. Sobriety was hard enough without actually becoming the kind of person who had nothing to be ashamed of. Not today, anyhow.

“Or I could always relapse,” I offered, “then I could play detective in the rehab.”

“No!” they said in unison.

So I like jerking their collective chain once in a while. It makes me feel a little less powerless.

In AA, everything’s an anniversary. In a couple of weeks, I’d be ten months sober. I still hadn’t told my mother. I kind of hoped she’d figure out for herself that I’d stopped drinking. But the few times I’d seen her, she hadn’t said a word. Since my dad died, she didn’t keep so much as a beer in the house. I used to carry at least a six-pack in with me. You’d think she’d notice the change. But growing up with a drunk for a dad and marrying another, Ma had become adept at not seeing what she didn’t want to know.

The Long Island Railroad chugged through the little towns of Nassau and Suffolk counties, bearing me inexorably toward East Islip and revelation. I couldn’t deny my mother was on my eighth step “list of all persons we had harmed.” In Step Nine, you make amends. My mother would have a heart attack if I handed her a check for all the cash I’d filched from her handbag from the age of eight on. And I knew the money was the least of it.

I had grown up in ethnic Yorkville. My father, like many of the neighborhood’s alcoholic dads, worked at the Ruppert Brewery. It’s long gone now. It didn’t survive the morphing of the neighborhood into the Upper East Side, though the rent-controlled apartment where I still lived did. Dad died of what his death certificate politely called liver failure when I was in my twenties. He’d left Ma pretty well provided for, between a union-negotiated pension and a surprising amount of life insurance that he’d bought while tanked and never bothered to cancel. But apart from rent, she couldn’t afford Manhattan.

Dad was mostly German American, but Ma was Irish like Jimmy’s folks. She’d picked East Islip because they had a chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The Our Lady of Knock division. I am not making this up. Not that she went to any meetings or events. Ma had a low tolerance for intimacy. No friends, no risks, no feelings. She complained if the cat snuggled up against her on the sofa. So maybe it wasn’t all my fault that I hadn’t found a way to tell her my big news before now.