Man of the Hour (39 page)

“Right.” She composed a demure smile. “I guess the other detective who was here didn’t know much about that.”

“There’s a lot Detective Noonan didn’t know.” He sat down on the couch, spreading his legs wide and putting his arms on the tops of the cushions, taking up as much room as possible.

“Can I get you a cup of tea?” she asked.

“No, I don’t want to take up a lot of your time.” He reclined like a sultan. “I just have a couple of questions.”

“Okay. I want to help.”

He looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Perhaps half a minute, as he continued to spread out. She became aware of different parts of her own body, squirming, itching, needing attention.

“So I talked to your brother,” he said, crossing thick legs in stone-washed blue jeans. “Nasser.”

“Oh yes?”

Her brother’s name was like a little firecracker in her ear. This was going to be bad, she knew. Something upsetting. She paused and listened a moment, making sure her stepmother and half sisters hadn’t stopped by the house for money on their way to go shopping at the Kings Highway mall. She didn’t want them to be scared and confused by this strange man being here.

“Yes, we had a very interesting conversation.” The detective flopped a thick beige notebook onto his lap and made a show of turning the pages. “He told me he was with you on the day the bomb went off at school.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth began to fuss with her hair, pulling two tendrils down in front of her eye and then letting them go, lest it appear she was trying to hide something. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

So that was why he was here. To find out about Nasser. No wonder her brother had been calling and leaving messages for her since last night. She tried to make herself relax, putting her hands in her front pockets and rising slightly on the balls of her feet.

“He took me shopping for a helmet and pads for my Rollerblading,” she said. “It was close to my birthday.”

She paused, remembering that day again. Nasser showing up late. The smoke from down at the beach. Traffic on the Belt Parkway. And then she couldn’t make herself think about it anymore.

“Is that right?” Calloway casually flipped back two pages in his notebook and raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, I’m sure of it.”

“Then why’d you tell Detective Noonan you stayed home with a headache that day?” he said suddenly.

She dropped back on her heels, caught off guard. “I …” Her eyes darted around, waiting for her mouth to come up with an explanation. “I guess I didn’t want my teachers to know I was playing hooky.”

Calloway sat up and focused, like a dog hearing the word
bone
.

“Is that right?” he said. “You were worried about your teachers?”

The room began to feel pressurized. She felt blood leaving her head and half-turned away from him, fearing she would crumble. “I have good grades,” she said. “I didn’t want to get in trouble.”

Sensing her weakness, he got off the couch and stood in front of her, no more than a foot away, intimidating her with his size. She realized how few men had ever stood this close to her before.

“Let me tell you something, hon.” He breathed ham and eggs in her face. “A man died in this bombing. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, of course.” She nodded vigorously. “It was Sam. He never hurt anybody …”

He cut her off, not interested in the sentiment. “It means this is a homicide. It means whoever did this is going to get the death penalty. And believe me,
we are going to find out who did this
.”

“Yes, I understand.” Her fingertips pressed into the seams of her pockets.

“So if I find out that you and your brother had anything to do with this, you are going to get the death penalty.
Capisce?
” He pinched his fingers together and wagged them in her face. “The fact that you are a young girl will cut no ice at all. You are an Arab in America. It’s going to be an eye for an eye. So if you got something to tell me,
say it now
,” he barked. “Otherwise, I am not going to be able to do a damn thing for you.”

She looked down, trying to process all the information that had been thrust at her. Nasser. The smoke from the beach. The Monastery of Branches. The key on the table. The slap in the parking lot. Her father. Her mother. It was too much and not enough. She needed time to sort through it all.

“I had nothing to do with it,” she said, looking up at the detective and straggling to keep her voice steady. “I went shopping that day with my brother. He bought me pads and a helmet for when I go Rollerblading. It was close to my birthday.”

“Prove it,” said Calloway, his pale mustache twitching.

“Well, we were stuck in traffic for a while on the Belt,” she said, exaggerating the delay for both herself and him at the same time. “But I kept the sales receipt from later that day. I wasn’t sure the helmet fit right.”

Calloway seemed to inflate and men deflate, hearing the news. Clearly, he’d been hoping to catch the break here that would solve his case.

“All right, go get the slip,” he said. “I haven’t got all day.”

50

“I THINK SHE HAS
a crush on you,” said Donna Vitale.

“Who?” David finished the spaghetti on his plate and took another helping. Comfort food.

“That little Arab girl I saw you talking to in the office today.”

They were having dinner at Donna’s apartment on Carroll Street in Park Slope. A modest one-bedroom floor-through, with period details and garden access. A self-sufficient kind of place, with a tiny kitchen, a futon in the back, and a writing desk at the front bay windows, which no doubt let in drenching sunlight during the day.

“You don’t like her, do you?” said David.

“I don’t
know
her.” Donna helped herself to some salad and re-filled her glass of white wine. “I had her brother in my class a few years back, though. A world-class jerk. The one time he spoke up in class was to tell me he didn’t think it was right for there to be women teachers at the school. Also, I think he somehow got the impression I was Jewish, which didn’t sit too well with him either.”

“Yes, he had some adjustment problems.”

David found himself taking greedy gulps of food. Left to his own devices, he was a determined but awful cook—always putting in he-man amounts of spices and herbs to disastrous effect—so it had been ages since he’d had a good homemade meal.

“Kids like that, I don’t know.” Candlelight played off Donna’s plain here-it-is hair and shone in the one eye staring off dreamily into the distance. “They can sap you, if you don’t watch it. Troublemakers. Did I tell you I had a couple of Russian girls in my class last year who were giving boys blow jobs for rides in their cars?”

“Are you serious?”

“On my mother’s.” Donna raised her hand, taking an oath. “Then you got your druggies, your gangster wannabes—white and black—and your kids whose parents are just too stupid to let them concentrate on school.”

“Actually, those are sometimes my favorites.” David twirled a strand around his fork. “The ones who need a little extra.”

“Well yeah!” Donna picked up her glass. “Me too. That’s not what I was talking about before. I was talking about the knuckleheads who don’t want to work. But the others, the ones who have to overcome something, who maybe have some little imperfection but keep trying anyway? They’ve got my heart.”

Is that why you invited me over tonight? David wondered. Because I’m so fucking imperfect? Who cared? He was grateful to be anywhere people would have him.

She smiled and went to the kitchen to get him a second beer.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked when she came back.

“About what?”

“About your life. About the mess you’re in.” She twisted off the bottle cap and poured it into his glass mug for him.

“Well.” He thanked her with a nod. “I could make up T-shirts. ‘I
Bombed Coney Island High.’”

“You could.”

“Other than that, I’m just going full-tilt, three hundred miles an hour in no particular direction.” He stared at the fizzing head of his beer, trying to fight the abysmal feeling inside. “I’m talking to the kids, talking to the neighborhood people, talking to my lawyers. But nobody knows nothin’. The bomb got there and went off by itself.”

She smiled sympathetically. “So do you throw up your hands now?”

“No way. I can’t.” He gulped down half the beer and then remembered he needed to be more cautious with his drinking. “Did I tell you my lawyers want me to take a polygraph and do a live TV interview with this guy Lindsay Paul later this week?”

“Think that’s smart?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to do it,” he said firmly. “But then I was at the playground with my son the other day and I noticed that none of the other kids would play with him because their parents recognized me.” He winced, remembering Arthur’s bewildered expression. “And then I realized there was a team of three or four FBI agents watching us from outside the fence. While I’m
at the playground. With my son.
So I just lost it with them.” He closed his fist around the mug. “I went over and started screaming at the guy in charge, Donald Sippes. ‘Get the fuck away from me, you motherfucker. Are you trying to give my son an asthma attack?’ And then I turn around and Arthur’s behind me, and he’s screaming at the agents too. All red-faced and wheezing, going, ‘My daddy’s not a bad guy! He’s not! He’s not! He’s not!’”

“And that killed you,” Donna said.

“Yeah, it kind of tore me up a little,” he said quietly, trying to hold in his emotions. “So then I called back my lawyers and said, ‘Okay, let’s pull out all the stops. I’m not letting my son walk around with this anymore.’”

He fell silent, listening to voices passing on the street and leaves rustling on the trees. He hadn’t seen the surveillance agents when he came up the street tonight, but he knew they were out there.

“So can I ask you something?” Donna wiped her lips with her napkin.

“Sure, go ahead.”

She hesitated, seeming to take his measure for a moment. “Have you thought about what would happen if you got locked up?” she asked.

“We’re still a long way from that,” he said, finishing his beer.

She saw through his bravado right away. “Big man,” she said. “Think you could handle Rikers Island?”

“Well, it wouldn’t exactly be my first time around.”

“Oh?”

He put his mug down hard, rattling their plates. “You knew I got arrested before, didn’t you? It was in the papers.”

“I think I read something about it.” Her wandering eye wandered farther away from him.

“I was a kid.” He turned the glass around, studying the way the light changed color in its contours. “I had this job being lifeguard at the Westbury Beach Club, and, you know, I was just a local kid working for the rich summer people. So anyway, I hooked up with a couple of idiots. Pete Spano and Dickie Bergman. Pete really, really wanted to be in the Mafia and Dickie was just insane—he had white hair, like an albino, but not quite. It was like coming that close without achieving albino-ness drove him crazy.” He laughed, and then felt a tug of shame. “So what happened was, they got me into stealing cars from the club’s parking lot at night.”

“Oh yeah?” She rested her chin on her palm.

“Yeah.” He retreated into himself for a moment, the second beer hitting him as he wondered if he should continue. “I wasn’t so much into stealing as I was into just driving them around and bringing them back. Pete and Dickie went straight to the larceny. They actually took some of the cars out to Patchogue and sold them to wise guys.” He shook his head, knowing he’d gone too far in the story to stop. “I don’t know why I got involved. I was just this doofy kid, who was always reading war books and trying to get good grades and taking my grandmother to the market in her wheelchair every week. So I don’t know. I thought it would be cool and I’d get girls to pay attention to me if I showed up driving a bitchin’ Corvette.”

“No wonder you get along with all the misfits.” She turned a little, focusing her good eye on him. “So what happened?”

“I got caught.” He studied the dregs at the bottom of his mug. “I guess maybe that’s what I wanted all along, taking cars from the club where I was working. I took this beautiful red MG-BGT for a spin down Ocean Boulevard and I lost control of it and rode it up onto this guy’s lawn, smashed it right into his porch jockey. He comes out in his bathrobe, says, ‘Are you all right, son?’ I said,
‘Fuck you!’
and hauled out of there. But the police caught up to me by the time I made it back to the beach club. It turned out they’d sort of been looking at us for a while.”

“So did you give your friends up?” Donna asked, cutting to the heart of the story as only a public schoolteacher could.

“Nope.” He watched the candle guttering. “This cop took me into the stationhouse, told me he was going to tell my father what I did, and wasn’t I a terrible kid, and my whole future would be ruined if I didn’t make a clean slate of it and rat on my friends.”

“And you said?”

“And I said, take me to the judge. I’ll take what I’ve got coming.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s the truth. I spent the night in jail with the drunks, and then the next morning I went before the judge and said, ‘Your Honor, I’ll own up to anything I did and that’s as far as it goes. All I ask is you take into account everything that I’m about. Don’t just judge me for this one mistake. Add everything else into it before you make your decision.’”

“You must’ve been a pretty ballsy kid,” she said, as she finished her wine.

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.” He suddenly felt abashed, remembering how scared he was standing up in the rickety little Nassau County courtroom that day. “I just knew it was what my father would’ve wanted me to say. Not that he gave me instructions of any kind. I just had this feeling about it. That if I laid it all out and didn’t forget who I was, everything would basically be all right. And it was. The judge gave me probation and sealed the record, so I wouldn’t have a problem getting a job later on.”