Fast Shuffle, page 2
Harry turned the envelope over.
“No name,” Harry said.
“Boots must of cost, what?” Nunez said. “Six, seven hundred? More? Lots more, probably.”
“No address,” Harry said.
“Wearing dirty overalls,” Nunez said, “white painter’s cap, you understand…”
Harry opened the envelope and took out a bank statement for Marian Turner.
“All his money on his feet,” Nunez said.
“She just closed out her account this afternoon,” Harry said. “Three hundred thousand dollars.”
Harry got up.
“I haven’t buffed the left yet,” Nunez said.
“You got a phone book?” Harry asked.
Nunez grunted as he stood, pushing his left hand against his left thigh for leverage. He went into the back of the stand and came out with a tattered city directory, which Harry flipped open to the T’s
Harry ran his finger down the page.
“Turner, Alan,” Harry said. “Turner, Carl. Turner, Daniel. Turner, Daniel, Jr. Turner, Leonard. Turner, Marian. One twenty-eight Sumner Avenue.”
CHAPTER 5
One twenty-eight Sumner Avenue was a four-story 1920s yellow-brick apartment house two blocks from Forest Park.
Harry parked his 1936 purple Packard touring car in front of the building. In the immaculate hallway, Harry checked the names next to the buzzers: Marian Turner 3A.
He rang the bell for 3A and waited.
No answer.
He jerked the door toward him and rapped the heel of his hand against the doorjamb, popping the lock.
Scalloped lights were mounted on either side of a large wall mirror. Threadbare Oriental runners carpeted the stairs, which Harry climbed to the third floor.
At 3A, Harry knocked.
No answer.
Harry took a long, thin, flexible metal strip—a slapjack—from his inside coat pocket and slipped it between the door and the door frame, loiding the lock.
The door clicked open.
Marian Turner’s apartment smelled of lavender. Living room: a cream and blue rug. A large blue Chinese vase on an oak side table with dried roses. Browning petals were scattered on the dusty tabletop. Farther into the room, a lamp illuminated part of a couch, a footstool, a mustard-colored easy chair.… Everything else melted into shadows. A ginger cat rubbed itself against Harry’s ankle.
The room had the feel of having been empty for days.
There was dust on the coffee table, on the top of the piano, on the closed laptop, which he stared at but didn’t touch
Harry leafed through a stack of magazines—Harper’s, Wired, the New Yorker, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Bride, Architectural Digest—and picked up an alumni magazine from the University of Massachusetts.
“‘Turner, Marian, ’10,’” Harry read from the address label.
Harry put the mail back, from the floor picked up a newspaper, and looked at the date.
“Week ago Monday,” Harry said to the cat, which stood on its hind legs and pawed Harry’s pant leg.
Harry tossed the paper onto the table.
The cat dug its claws into Harry’s leg.
Harry bent to scratch the cat behind the ears, along the jaw, under the chin.
In the kitchen, the overhead light was on. On the table was a plate with the remains of a spaghetti dinner, dried to a crust. A half-empty glass of red wine. A dried purple circle ringed the glass. The refrigerator wheezed.
On the stove was more spaghetti in a pot, a solid clump. In a pan tomato sauce had patches of mold.
The cat meowed.
The pet bowls next to the refrigerator were empty. The food gone. The water evaporated.
Harry filled the water bowl at the sink. He opened the cupboards with difficulty. The paint was so thick, the cupboard doors stuck. He searched the crowded shelves until he found a bag of dry cat kibble, which he poured into the food bowl.
The cat attacked the food—one paw in the bowl, growling as it ate.
In the bedroom, a streetlight shone through the window on the bedspread, which had pockets of shadows in the indentations where the cat had slept. It didn’t look as if anyone else had slept in this bed for a while.
Harry picked up an empty coffee cup from the bureau. Dust was everywhere, except where the coffee cup had been.
The digital readout on the answering machine had twentythree messages.
Harry straddled a chair, took out a pad and pen to copy down the messages, and hit the “replay” button.
CHAPTER 6
Friday’s apartment building was modern. Clean. But, like many new buildings, already falling into disrepair. The rugs were prematurely worn. The cheap light fixtures were speckled with rust. The lobby mirror was blotched, branched where the silver backing had worn away.
Friday unlocked her mailbox, took out a handful of letters and catalogs, locked the mailbox, and was leafing through the mail as she crossed the lobby when a shadowy figure slipped from behind a dying potted palm: Plante.
“Linda,” Plante said.
Startled, Friday dropped the mail.
* * *
Harry stood at the open door to the apartment next to Marian Turner’s place. Marian Turner’s neighbor, a woman in her mid-fifties named Sharon Lahey, wore a sweatsuit and was wiping her hands on a small blue-checked towel. Her apartment, behind her, gave off a smell of fried onions.
“So,” Lahey said, “the second, third time I’m out running and some guy gets in my slipstream, figuring he’s got a free look during his run, I decide the hell with giving a show to these yo-yos and I get a NordicTrack.”
“Your neighbor…,” Harry said.
“So,” Lahey continued, “I figure, I’m running in place in my own home, what’s to worry?”
“The last time you saw her…,” Harry said.
“What I forgot,” Lahey said, “is the gas man, the electric man, the mailman, you.…”
“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Harry said, “but—”
“Morning, night,” Lahey said, “doesn’t matter, the minute I put on my sweats, the doorbell rings.…”
“Ms. Lahey,” Harry said, “this is important.”
“Is there a light,” Lahey said, “an alarm somewhere, goes off: Lahey’s in her sweats?”
“I’m investigating—” Harry began.
“Garter belts, I can understand,” Lahey said. “But what is it, this thing about men and sweatpants?”
“Your neighbor,” Harry said, “Marian Turner—her answering machine’s got a week’s worth of messages.”
“Maybe she took a vacation,” Lahey said.
“When you go away,” Harry said, “don’t you call in for your messages?”
Lahey shrugged.
“These kids,” Lahey said. “Move in, move out. Odd hours. Who can keep track?”
“She didn’t say anything about a business trip?” Harry asked. “A vacation? A family emergency?”
“Never talked to her,” Lahey said. “Hardly ever saw her.”
“Anyone visit her recently?” Harry asked.
Lahey shook her head no.
“Far as I can tell,” she said, “she’s got nobody.”
“Friends?” Harry asked. “Family?”
“Except for the carpenter,” she said. “Guy, mid-thirties, coveralls, impressive red boots. Should of asked where he got them. Working in her apartment a week ago Saturday. His truck was parked out front all morning. Pillette Construction.”
CHAPTER 7
Winchester Square was a slum. Holiday Street was lined with slum shops. Lincoln Pawnshop. Checks Cashed. Tropical Products. Hardware-Houseware. Goodwill. Auto Parts. Failing businesses and small-time operations.
Pillette Construction was a hole-in-the-wall with a light showing through a dirty window. Still open. It stood next to an old theater turned into a dollar store. On the marquee, instead of the names of movie stars and feature films, was an advertisement: Everything you need under $1.
The first E was missing: verything you need …
As Harry entered Pillette’s, a bell over the door rang. Over the counter hung a cheesecake calendar, 1940s style: A busty woman in a one-piece striped swimsuit leaned forward, holding a huge beach ball, her bottom stuck out. The store smelled of sawdust and oil—a smell that gave Harry a taste of tin.
A man came out of a back room, carrying a roll of construction plans. He was heavyset, unshaved, dressed in a faded blue work shirt, carpenter’s coveralls, a white painter’s cap, and red boots. Newly polished.
“Pillette?” Harry asked.
The man nodded.
“Bookcases, loft beds, roofs, decks, maintenance, renovations,” Pillette said. “I don’t do masonry, electrical, mechanical, or plumbing, but I got good subcontractors. Any job two hundred dollars or more, there’s ten percent overage.”
“Marian Turner,” Harry said.
Pillette didn’t react.
“You did some work for her?” Harry said.
“You got a job for me?” Pillette asked.
Harry took out a twenty-dollar bill, folded it lengthwise, and tented it on the counter.
“Yeah,” Harry said, “tell me about it.”
Pillette took the twenty.
“Kitchen cupboards,” he said.
“Really?” Harry said. “I saw her kitchen. You have an interesting way of painting. Lots of coats. Making it look like the work is at least twenty years old.”
“It’s late,” Pillette said. “I’m only here ’cause I was going over plans for a redwood deck.”
“You have a copy of Marian Turner’s plans?” Harry asked. “Estimate? Bill?”
Pillette came from around the counter, opened his door for Harry to leave.
The bell rang.
“You want some work done,” he said, “give me a call, okay?”
He waited.
“Your job for this gal Turner,” Harry said. “Is that why you had her bank statement?”
Pillette wrinkled his nose as if about to sneeze.
A tell? Harry wondered. Or a tickle?
“She withdraws a lot of money today,” Harry said, “but doesn’t seem to have been home for a week.”
Pillette sneezed.
Maybe the sneeze is the tell, Harry thought.
Pillette rubbed his nose with a knuckle.
Harry nodded at the twenty Pillette still held.
“Apply that to my deposit,” Harry said.
CHAPTER 8
Friday’s living room was furnished with secondhand pieces, which Friday had improved. She had stripped and Butcher’s Waxed a pine cabinet. Draped a couch with red and gold cloth. One wall was dominated by a Georgia O’Keeffe lily. Another wall was covered with photographs of Springdale—pictures she had taken. A few showed Harry, some when he was much younger: playing softball in Forest Park, on a picnic at Tanglewood, clowning with friends, trying out a super-soaker at the Eastern States Exposition.
One showed Harry on the steps of Classical High School around 1997 with his arms around two friends: a huge beefy guy in a football sweatshirt—Brian Rossiter—and a guy in a sand-colored lamb’s wool sweater better groomed than either Harry or Rossiter—Plante. A little too well groomed.
Friday circled the room turning on every light. Plante followed her, holding the mail she’d dropped downstairs.
“Harry’s never going to marry you, Linda,” he said.
“Which means I have to marry you?” Friday asked.
“You could do worse,” Plante said.
“Only if I really worked at it,” Friday said.
“Eight hours a day in that dingy office,” Plante said, “waiting for Harry to come through with a paycheck you and I know is never going to arrive.”
“Is this a marriage proposal,” Friday asked, “or a job offer?”
“You and Harry,” Plante said. “I don’t get it.”
“You wouldn’t,” Friday said. “It’s called love.”
From the wall, Plante took the picture of himself, Rossiter, and Harry.
“Even in high school,” Plante said. “The police scanner Harry kept in his locker. He’d hear a call, liquor store burglary, stolen car, whatever.… Cut class, show up at the scene of the crime. What is it with him?”
“You were ready enough to cut school,” Friday said, “jump in the car…”
“Kicks,” Plante said. “And I stopped—when I grew up.”
“Now you get your kicks stalking me,” Friday said.
“Stalking?” Plante laughed. “You know how many women would be flattered?”
“How many?” Friday asked.
“Stalking,” Plante repeated. Not laughing.
“When are you going to stop that?” Friday asked. “I can’t stand it, Sonny!”
“Eighteen rooms,” Plante said. “Heated swimming pool. Private tennis court.”
“I’ve seen your place,” Friday said.
“It could be yours,” Plante said.
Friday took the mail from Plante and gestured to the stillopen apartment door.
“A whole new life,” Plante said.
Friday didn’t answer.
“Do you hate me that much?” he asked.
“Sonny,” Friday said, “if I hated you, it would be easy.”
Given this encouragement, Plante approached Friday, who backed away.
“In high school,” Friday said, “I used to pray that Harry would call me up before you to ask me out on the weekend. Because I knew if you called first, I’d accept. We’d go out. A soda. A movie. We’d do what everyone does. And I wanted to do that. I still want to do what everyone does. Get married, have babies, watch late-night TV together. Turner Classics. 30 Rock reruns.”
“If you want that—” Plante said.
“Chances are,” Friday said, “Harry’s never going to sit around watching late-night TV.”
“Then?” Plante said.
Friday said, “I could be so easily tempted.”
Plante leaned in to kiss her.
Friday shook her head no and said, “So be a pal, Sonny, and don’t tempt me.”
CHAPTER 9
Harry followed Pillette’s pickup truck from Winchester Square to Agawam, staying three cars behind, sometimes four. The truck was easy to spot ahead in the traffic. Pillette turned onto an industrial strip—NAPA Auto Parts, Best Value Hardwoods (Floor Laying, Refinishing & Resurfacing), Tri-State Show Stock, SecureCo Alarm Systems, SESBG (Dedicated to Serving Small Business), Affordable Self Storage (Friendly, Fences, Gated, Paved, Well Lit, Cameras), a small cement-block envelope factory. (The sign: An envelope the size of a town car. Below it, an LED running display: Business envelopes. Everyday mailing needs. Economical, security tinted, gummed, self-sealing, strip flap. Plain, window, double-window … Through our windows, you can see the future.) He pulled into a chain-link-enclosed parking lot for a strip club, Angel’s Lap. A blue and pink—nursery colors—neon sign showed a naked, winged, pouting woman straddling a faceless male figure.
Harry parked across the street, halfway down the block.
He let Pillette enter Angel’s and listened to two songs on John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey’s Radio Delux—“They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and an old recording of Slim and Slam’s “Tutti Fruitti”—before he followed Pillette into the strip club, ducking to get through the basement entrance and shouldering through the clacking beaded curtain.
Harry paused to survey the room as he grabbed a handful of white mints from a bowl by the cash register.
“People use the urinal,” the Bouncer-Greeter said, “don’t wash their hands, then stick their paws in the mints.”
The mints had a blue stripe around the middle. Harry spilled the mints into his jacket pocket.
“They did a study,” said the Bouncer-Greeter, a spherical man, his belly the size of a medicine ball. “You don’t want to know what’s in the mints.”
“Who’s they?” Harry popped a mint into his mouth. “People always say they did this, they did that.…”
The beads clacked as someone entered and passed behind Harry.
“Haven’t you wondered if they might be us?” Harry asked. “Us if we took another path in our past. If you, for example, got interested in mints, candy, free candy—maybe when you were a kid, maybe when you—you know, all kids do—pinched a Sky Bar. Which section did you like best? Caramel, vanilla, peanut, or fudge? The peanut always seemed out of place. Like a food. Peanut. The rest were strictly candy. Fudge, vanilla, caramel. But peanut … Yellow wrapper, red letters. I loved Sky Bars. You had your people—maybe they’re the people who people always say people say—your people who preferred Trudeau’s Seven Up. ‘Seven Delicious Varieties in One Bar.’ Seven. Too much, right? Who can remember the seven. Caramel, yeah, that’s easy. I think they had caramel. Fudge? Maybe. Seven’s too many choices. Too many choices leads to paralysis. You think it had anything to do with 7UP, the soda? There’s something to think about. How many candy bars shared a name with a soda? Seven Up, Sky Bar, when you ate them did you start at one end and work your way through? But then which end to start with? Or did you break the sections apart and eat them in some other order? Or no order at all? Or did you only get them when you could share them? Different sections, seems like you should be sharing. You definitely had to share a Three Musketeers. ‘All for one’ and that. But Three Musketeers—you didn’t have the problem of choice. All three sections tasted the same. Sky Bar, Seven Up—they were existential candy!”
“Yeah,” the Bouncer-Greeter said, grinning. “Sky Bar. You the man.”
The dim room was damp and smelled like a locker room. Despite the No Smoking signs, smoke swirled in the colored lights. Men sat alone or in small groups along the runway or at small tables, some mesmerized by the stripper who hung by her legs upside down from a pole, one knee akimbo, her hands caressing her body, others arguing about the Sox or the Celtics. One guy sat, back to the stage to get the light, working on a newspaper Sudoku. In front of every guy were half a dozen empty glasses and one or two full ones—two-drink minimum.
