Shoot the Moon (26 page)

The call comes in at 2216.

Goodman grabs the phone on the first ring, not wanting it to wake Kelly. Before even speaking into the receiver, he glances at the clock, wonders who can be calling him at 10:15 at night.

“Hello?” he says.

“Hello,” says a man’s voice he doesn’t recognize. “This Mikey?”

Goodman can’t remember the last time he’s been called Mikey. Few people seem to think of him as Mike, let alone Mikey. Those are names that conjure up flannel shirts and work boots. Goodman, with his ledgers and briefcase and pocket protector, has always considered himself decidedly Michael. Nonetheless, he now hears himself saying, “Yes, this is Mikey,” and as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he realizes he should have gone for “Yeah” instead of “Yes.”

“This is Vinnie,” the voice says. “Carmen’s brother.” Only he says it
Cah’men.

“How do you do?”

“I do good,” Vinnie says.

Goodman wonders why the previously paranoid Vinnie is all of a sudden not only using the phone but also identifying himself over it. He decides there must be some sort of trouble.

“Is there a problem?” he asks.

“No,” Vinnie says. “No problem at all.”

“Everything was okay?” Goodman’s pleased with himself for being clever enough to speak vaguely. He figures no one listening in could possibly know what they’re talking about.

“Everything was wonderful,” Vinnie assures him. “That book was terrific. That’s why I’m calling you.”

It takes a moment, but it registers in Goodman’s mind that “book” is Vinnie’s code word for the sample. An inspiration from the exchange at Barnes & Noble, no doubt.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Goodman says.

“Yeah,” Vinnie says. “I’ll be ready to do some more reading pretty soon. Maybe you can tell me how many more books are in that particular series.”

Goodman hesitates. He wonders if Vinnie’s not being too obvious here. But then he figures, Who am I to outparanoid the paranoid Vinnie?

“That particuiar book was one of four volumes, just as your friend requested. And there are thirty-five volumes to a . . . a series.”

“And how many serieses are we talking about here?”

“Altogether,” Goodman tells him, “I understand the publisher has nineteen left. Less that one book, of course.”

Vinnie lets out a low-pitched whistle. “An’ they’re all as exciting as the one I read?” he asks.

“Every one’s a classic,” Goodman says.

“Whattaya say we get together and talk tomorrow afternoon, Mikey boy? Just you an’ me.”

“Sounds okay,” Goodman says, though the truth is, he’s not sure if it really sounds okay or not.

“How ‘bout right in front of the library? You know, the main one, with the two big lions and all those steps?”

“Sure,” Goodman says. He decides Vinnie’s a bit too much into extended metaphors, but at the same time he figures the Forty-Second Street library ought to be as safe and anonymous a place as there is.

“Three o’clock okay?”

“Two’s better,” Goodman says, for no particular reason other than wanting it to appear as if he’s exercising a tiny bit of control in this thing.

“Holy motherfuckin’ shit!” exclaims Daniel Riley as soon as the conversation is over. “Did you hear
that?”

“I heard that,” Ray Abbruzzo says, although the word
heard
is somewhat difficult to understand, since it comes out part word and part belch.

“This guy’s sitting on
nineteen kilos
of pure!”

“And now he’s got some wiseguy looking to buy the whole load off him.”

“Unfuckingbelievable!” Riley can barely contain himself.

“We gotta get some backup,” Abbruzzo says, “cover that meet tomorrow. What time did he say it was on for? Three o’clock?”

“Yeah,” Riley agrees, still a notch off his game from the three-quarters of a bottle of Barolo in his system.

“What was that all about?” Carmen asks as soon as Goodman hangs up the phone.

“Our man Vinnie,” he says. “Wanted to know how much more there is. Seems like the sample was a big hit.”

“You two talked like that on the
phone?”

“Not like that,” he assures her. “It was all very top secret. By the book, you might say.”

“Nothing’s secret on the phone, Michael.”

“All we did was arrange a meeting.”

“For when?” she asks.

“Tomorrow. Two in the afternoon.”

“Where are we meeting him?”

“
We
aren’t,” he tells her.

“Excuse me?”

“Vinnie was quite clear about that. ‘Just you an’ me, Mikey boy,’ to be precise.”

“
Mikey boy?”
she parrots.

Goodman feels himself begin to blush a bit.

“Good old Vincent.” She shakes her head. “In my brother’s world, everybody’s gotta have a nickname. He was always hanging out with people like ‘Jimmy Blue Eyes’ and ‘Frankie Tonsils’ and ‘Bobby the Geek.’ Jesus,
Mikey boy!”

“Sounds like I could have done worse,” Goodman says. “I think it’s actually got a nice ring to it.”

“Besides which,” she tells him, “you’re not going alone.”

“Listen-”

“Don’t
listen
me,” she cuts him off. “Vincent’s my brother. He doesn’t tell me what to do.”

For Goodman, it’s a side of Carmen he hasn’t seen before, a fiery stubbornness that takes him by surprise. But he knows that part of him will be very happy to have her there tomorrow, with the two big lions and all those steps.

That night, he lies on the floor. After a bit, he hears his daughter’s breathing and Pop-Tart’s purring. But the third set of sounds is irregular.

“You awake?” he says softly into the darkness.

“Yes,” Carmen says.

“Me, too.”

There’s a rustling noise, and then she’s on the floor next to him. Emboldened by the dark, he reaches an arm around her and draws her to him. He feels the back of her T-shirt, tries to remember if he peeked at the color of her underpants before they turned the lights out. Has to settle for imagining them red. They lie like that for what seems like a long time. Goodman knows that Carmen has come to him to express her caring and her feelings of closeness to him. He understands on an intellectual level that her gesture isn’t sexual in nature. Nonetheless, it’s been months since Goodman has been next to a woman in any way remotely like this, and while the last thing he wants to do is to misread her gesture, he’s only human, and he finds himself completely powerless to control either his galloping pulse or the growing stiffness at the front of his undershorts. As he lies there in an excruciating mixture of delight and dread, he wonders which of his twin embarrassments will be first to betray him - his heartbeat or his hard-on?

Morning comes, and Goodman realizes he’s made it through the night. Evidently, his pulse must have finally returned to double digits; somehow, his penis must have managed to behave itself. He vaguely remembers Carmen kissing him while it was still dark, then slipping away from him and retaking her place on the bed with Kelly and Pop-Tart. He does his best to convince himself that the kiss carried with it some unspoken promise of wonderful things to come. But the truth is that he remembers it being delivered not hotly upon his mouth, but softly against his cheek, in a fashion that bespoke far more of sisterly love than animal lust.

Morning begins with breakfast. Kelly announces that she wants “shapes.” “Shapes” are pancakes, only Goodman pours the batter onto the skillet in such a way as to create animals, stars, snowflakes, and other creations. Each shape is awarded to the first person able to identify it. Carmen dutifully holds back, allowing Kelly to name almost all of the shapes. Somehow, though, it’s Pop-Tart who ends up with the tallest stack of prizes.

Morning also brings laundry duty, and the three of them - Pop-Tart is excused as too full to join in - traipse down to the basement with arms full of clothes, detergent, bleach, and wire hangers. The washer and dryer happen to be next to the storage room, and their path takes them directly past its open door. But if Carmen notices the bins inside, she makes no mention of them.

Next comes a trip to the supermarket, where Goodman, in a rare display of extravagance, tells Kelly to pick out things she wants. But years of exposure to her father’s frugal ways have left their imprint on her, and it takes considerable encouragement from both adults before she settles on Mallomars, raisins, orange sherbert, and Count Chocula cereal. She’s much less resistant when she gets to PET NEEDS, in aisle eight, where only the most appetizing flavors of cat food will do, and two twenty-five-pound bags of environmentally friendly Kitty Litter become a must, because the store is featuring a “buy one, get one free” special. Together with items Goodman and Carmen pick out, the bill comes to $53.67. Goodman pays for it with three of Manny’s twenties, leaving them a little over $40 to get by with until his next payday.

By the time they’re back home and finished unloading their purchases, it’s almost noon. Kelly has shown no sign of headaches so far, but her energy level has dropped a notch or two, and she looks pale to Goodman. He helps her curl up in front of the television with Pop-Tart and Larus, and the three of them soon seem absorbed in a program about grizzly bears.

“Don’t forget we have a meeting with Vincent at two o’clock,” Carmen reminds him as they put away the groceries.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he assures her. “But I’d like you to stay here with Kelly while I go. I just don’t feel it’s something she needs to be around.”

But Carmen disagrees. “I don’t trust my brother,” she says. “I know he’s less likely to try to take advantage of you with me in the picture. Besides, all you’re going to be doing is talking,” she says. “I’ll keep her off to one side. She’s not going to know what it’s about.”

“She’s tired,” he says.

“She’s resting now.”

“It’s cold out.”

“You know, Michael, it’s just possible that in loving your daughter so much, you end up babying her. Treat somebody like they’re really sick, soon enough you convince them they are. You may need to consider if you’re not hurting her by being so overprotective.”

It’s something he
has
thought about, and he knows she may be right about this. But he finds himself totally unable to do things any differently. He remembers reading a book some years ago about a father so worried about his little boy that he was forever imagining disasters that might happen to him. Finally, there was a car accident, and the father, reaching his injured child, hugged him desperately as he imagined the life draining out of his tiny body. It turned out that the boy hadn’t been mortally injured after all, but the father, in his panic and grief, proceeded to squeeze his son so tightly that he suffocated him, thereby accomplishing what the accident hadn’t.

Is Carmen right? Is he that father now, suffocating the life out of his child in some misguided perception of the level of danger she’s in?

He feels a hand on his arm and is brought back to the moment. “She’ll be okay, Michael,” Carmen tells him. He looks into her face for more, for some promise - some absolute, unconditional, money-back guarantee printed in indelible ink. Her eyes hold his for a moment, but then she averts them, searching over his shoulder for some space in his tiny cabinet that might be big enough for the box of Count Chocula she holds in her other hand. And in this instant, from that seemingly insignificant loss of eye contact, he knows that as much as she’d like to, she will not give him that promise; she cannot.

Michael Goodman isn’t a child. He knows that in life there
are
no guarantees, that indelible ink is something from way back in penmanship classes. But over the days to follow, he’ll remember this moment and be drawn back to it in an attempt to understand Carmen’s hesitancy, revealing itself as it did at the very moment when he’d most needed her reassurance, and when she should most have wanted to give it to him.

What he doesn’t notice - what he cannot see as Carmen reaches past him to wedge the cereal box into a space barely large enough to contain it - is that she’s biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

“We gotta cover a meet at 1500 hours,” Ray Abbruzzo barks into the phone to his lieutenant. “The Mole is settin’ up what sounds like a nineteen-kilo deal. We need a surveillance van, video equipment, a parabolic mike-”

“Whoah, whoah,” Lieutenant Spangler stops him. “Today’s Saturday. You know you gotta requisition that stuff by noon Friday if you want it over the weekend.”

“Since when is that?”

“Since Salvaggi and Wilcocki got caught using the stuff to drive down to Philly and tape the Giants-Eagles game, that’s when.”

“
This is nineteen kilos, Lou!”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s
1,900!
I’m not putting my shield on the line. Cover it on foot.”

“It’s cold out there.”

“Wear your mittens,” the lieutenant says. “You got binoculars?”

“Yeah.”

“Use ‘em. You wanna get high-tech, bring a camera. You know how to work one?”

“Yeah.”

“Make sure you put film in it,” Spangler adds. “That dickbrain Jensen once shot thirty-six exposures of a wiseguy funeral, forgot to load the fuckin’ thing.”

“I’ll load it,” Abbruzzo says. “Can I get a few extra men at least?”

“Whaddayou, fuckin’ kidding me? I got 2,000 cabbies converging on City Hall, protesting they gotta learn English. I got the President’s wife in town all fuckin’ weekend, promoting equal rights for retards. There’s talk of a counterdemonstration on behalf of nonretards. The borough commander’s been pulling guys offa their RDOs to work with the feds on security detail. And I’m supposed to find you extra men? Get fuckin’
real,
willya!”

“Just thought I’d ask.”

“You asked. Now cover the fuckin’ meet, and don’t fuckin’ blow it.”

Abbruzzo hangs up the phone.

“How did it go?” Riley asks him.

“Not bad. He says we should cover the meet.”

“You look funny, Daddy,” Kelly tells Goodman as he tries his hardest to slick his hair back. He’s wearing his all-black drug dealer-impersonation costume again, but they forgot to buy styling gel this morning, so once again his hair refuses to cooperate.

“No comments from the peanut gallery,” he tells her, then ignores her confused look. If
he
can’t remember where that saying comes from, how can he expect
her
to understand it?

“Where are we going?” she asks him.

“To the library,” he says. “I’ve got to meet somebody there, so you may have to wait with Carmen for a few minutes.”

“No problem,” she says.

Goodman locks the door behind them, and they head downstairs, Kelly leading the way, Carmen following her, and Goodman bringing up the rear. From the spring with which Kelly takes the steps, Goodman wonders if maybe Carmen was right after all. Stop treating your daughter like an invalid, he tells himself.

They head west, toward Fifth Avenue.

In the plant, it’s 1310 hours. Abbruzzo is the only one there. He sent Riley out fifteen minutes ago to buy film. Neither of them knows what kind of film the camera takes, so Riley took it with him.

The phone in Goodman’s apartment has been quiet all morning. The way Abbruzzo figures it, with the meet set for three o’clock, the Mole won’t show himself again for another hour or so. Weems and Sheridan have been directed to proceed straight to the Forty-Second Street library and have the steps staked out by 1420. In other words, everything’s covered. So Abbruzzo permits himself to lean back and close his eyes for a few minutes. No harm in that.

At Fifth Avenue, they catch the number 3 bus. Kelly insists they ride in the very back, where it’s warmest from the motor and where there’s room enough for her to sit between Goodman and Carmen.

“What are you meeting this man about, Daddy?” she asks.

“Business,” he tells her.

“What kind of business?”

“It’s an investment opportunity,” he says. “It’s a bit too complicated for me to explain it to you.”

“Sounds like
monkey business
to me,” she says.

Carmen laughs. “That’s a pretty good guess,” she says. Goodman shoots her a look, but she either misses it or chooses to ignore it.

Lighten up, he tells himself. After all, he can only get about 500 years in prison for what he’s doing. If somebody doesn’t kill him first, that is.

Riley gets back to the plant with the film. “Did we want Kodacolor or Kodachrome?” he asks Abbruzzo.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? Why didn’t you ask them at the store?”

“I did,” Riley says. “But you know these Koreans - they can barely speak English. Wanted to know what
speed
I needed. Did I want prints or slides or contack sheets?”

“What are contack sheets?”

“Beats the shit outa me.”

It takes the two of them twenty minutes to load the camera, and when they’re finished, they’re still not sure they’ve done it right.

“Anything new in Moleland?” Riley asks.

“Nah,” Abbruzzo says. “Watch - he won’t leave the burrow for another half hour. It’s got to the point where I know this guy real good. Right now, he’s sittin’ on his butt in front of his TV set.”

In fact, Goodman’s butt is at that very moment lifting itself up from the backseat of the number 3 bus and following the rest of him toward the exit.

At street level, he puts on his imitation Ray Ban sunglasses to complete his outfit. He gets a look from his daughter that he interprets as “I used to know you.” It’s Carmen’s hand she reaches for as they head for the library steps, he notices.

“What does Vincent look like?” he asks Carmen.

“Vinnie.”

“Vinnie,” he repeats.

“Like a wanna-be gangster,” she says before smiling and looking him up and down. “Same as you.”

“Hey,” he reminds her, “this was your idea, remember?”

“I do remember. If you’d have shown up wearing your pocket protector, my brother would’ve flipped out. At least this way, he’ll think you’re both members of the same species.”

“Can I have a hot dog, Daddy?” Kelly wants to know, pointing at a dark little foreigner behind a Sabrett wagon.

“No-”

“Of course you can,” Carmen says, overruling him and heading that way with Kelly.

“You have no idea what they put in those things,” he calls after them.

“They sell a million of them every day, all over the city,” Carmen calls back. “They’re probably safer than the air she’s breathing.”

Goodman relents. After six years of parenting, he’s getting a crash course in lightening up. It doesn’t come easy for him, but he’s trying his best to go with it. He runs after them. “I’ll take mine with mustard and onions,” he says, trying to catch up with them in more ways than one.

They eat their hot dogs sitting on the steps, in the warmth of the sun, leaning against the base of one of the lions. “Not bad,” Goodman is forced to admit, though when he burps a moment later, it tastes of onions, mustard, and something that only approximates any meat he’s familiar with.

“There’s Vincent now,” Carmen says.

“Vinnie,” he corrects her, turning to where she’s looking. Making their way up the steps are two men. Goodman recognizes one of them as T.M., the guy he exchanged flowers with at Barnes & Noble. The other one is smaller, dark-haired, and a bit dangerous-looking. He wears mirrored aviator sunglasses, the kind that make it impossible to see his eyes. He gets within a few feet of where they’re sitting before Goodman notices a long, thin scar on the side of his face. Completely ignoring Goodman, he addresses Carmen.

“What are
you
doing here?” he asks.

“What’s
he
doing here?” She gestures at T.M. Then, without waiting for an answer, she introduces them. “Michael, this is my brother Vinnie.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Goodman says.