Slugfest

“All right, forget it. Go upstairs. Besides, if you stay any longer I might wind up owning another weirdo garden ornament.”

“They’re not garden ornaments. They’re art. And it’s an investment. Yours is going to appreciate dramatically.”

“Yeah, yeah, like souvenir coins and Lladro and all that other crap she has around the house. I get it.”

We still hadn’t discussed delivery. I figured since it involved manly issues, like trucks and shipping, it would be his domain and not hers.

“Give me your cell number,” I said, “that way we can work out the shipping details.”

He hemmed and hawed and deferred to his wife, which was a first in my limited experience with this couple.

“You don’t need to call me. And if I want to talk to you, we know how to reach you.”

Did they? I didn’t remember giving either of them my number. And I did remember J. C’s earlier advice— “Watch your back.” And I felt Guy Anzalone watching it, too, as I walked away.

Twenty-six

There were almost as many Starbucks stores in New York as there were Korean grocers, but the old-time diners and coffee shops were a dying breed, forced out of existence by the purveyors of designer lattes, which took a full minute to order and another five to get. All things being equal, I went with the small businessman.

Connie and I had planned to meet at Andrew’s Coffee Shop not far from the Wagner Center and equidistant from the St. George and Lucy’s apartment, where I’d assumed I’d be waking up. Even though I’d slept at the hotel, I thought it best to stick to the original plan so I wouldn’t get sucked into spending more time on this mission of mercy than I’d planned.

One of the best things about diners in New York (and maybe everywhere) was the dessert case. Gleaming with chrome like Airstream trailers, some were tall with revolving shelves. Others were horizontal and big as meat lockers, only instead of carcasses they held towering carrot cakes, strawberry shortcakes, eclairs, napoleons, seven-layer cakes, coconut cream pies, chocolate cakes with a half inch of icing between the layers and even more on top, and white cakes so artfully decorated all that was missing was the happy plastic couple on top. They were shrines to butter and sugar.

Despite the ball and chain of my suitcase, I got to Andrew’s Coffee Shop ten minutes early and slid into a booth under the establishment’s Wall of Fame, where autographed pictures of politicians, wrestlers, and neighborhood luminaries looked down on me as I checked out the menu. The dessert case called, as it always did, but the thought of Lucy’s red dress and the possibility of fabric fatigue as it stretched across my middle kept me on the straight and narrow. I ordered coffee and waited for Connie to arrive. The night before she’d told me she’d been to Barney’s and Bloomingdale’s and had gone to Bergdorf’s but never gotten higher than the first floor because she wasn’t comfortable there. Perhaps she really had gotten out the phone book and started with the As in pursuit of the perfect outfit for the reception. If that was the case, I could be looking at a lengthy expedition that would take us from Chanel to Zara.

My coffee cup was refilled twice and I’d successfully identified all the celebrities in the photographs when I started getting antsy. I called Connie’s room at the hotel and she said she was just leaving. Why was she still there? Fat Frank was driving, and Connie swore she’d arrive in five minutes. She would have been on time, she said, but she and Guy had had a knockdown, drag-out fight that morning—as much as you can over the telephone. Up until that point, I had had every intention of telling Connie about my nightcap with her husband, but she launched into a theory about his bogus early morning meeting, that ended with her threatening to fling lye in the face of the woman she suspected he was two-timing her with. I thought it best to stay silent before she sent Fat Frank to the hardware store for lye.

The meter was already running. I would give this two hours, even if we only got to the F for Fendi. One hour was too short, as if I couldn’t wait to get away from her and three hours—well, three hours was too long to spend with a woman who wore mollusks on her boobs and thought maiming a romantic rival was appropriate behavior.

By this time, the formerly nice waitress began to wonder if it had been a mistake to let me occupy such valuable real estate if all I was going to do was guzzle free refills on the coffee, yak on the phone, and study the pictures on the Wall of Fame.

“Do you need a few more minutes, honey?” she asked. This was waitress code for Are you ever going to eat anything? And My wrist is killing me, why didn’t you sit at the counter so I wouldn’t have to keep walking back and forth with this heavy pot?

“I’m waiting for someone.” I tried to look hungry to assure her that when my companion arrived, we’d order mountains of food. She glared at the counter in case I missed the hint. I looked, too, and smiled. It was a known fact that smiling, along with saying “I understand” or “I’m sorry,” were three of the surest ways of getting someone to shut up and leave. Doesn’t always work, but it did this time. She walked away, slightly puzzled, and replaced the coffeepot on the Bunn-O-Matic machine, staring at me and muttering to one of her colleagues behind the counter.

Seated at the counter were a handful of men—solo diners with the look of regulars, there for fuel, not the ambience, and certain that by sitting at the counter they wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone. At the far end of the line of stools something caught my eye. A denim jacket, covered in patches. I only saw the back of it because the wearer was hunched over his food and the hoodie underneath was pulled up over his head. I’d seen a jacket like that recently.

Just then, Connie breezed into the coffee shop, full of sunshine and profuse apologies and yammering on about the members’ reception as if it were prom night and she was hoping to be named queen. That was where I’d seen it, the flower show. The kid whose bag was stashed at my booth was wearing something like it. I jumped up and swept by Connie.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“Have a seat under Hulk Hogan and study the menu. Whatever you get, order the same for me so the waitress doesn’t think I’m a deadbeat. I’ll be right back.”

As I got closer, I recognized some of the patches on the jacket—Virgin Gorda, Tahoe, Canyonlands, Moab. I tapped the guy on the shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

Twenty-seven

He spun around on the counter stool as if ready for a fight. It wasn’t the kid who’d tried to sneak into the show. It was one of Lauryn Peete’s high school gardeners. The one with the rat.

“Oh, hi. Sorry. I thought you were someone else. The jacket looks familiar. Are you Jamal? Ms. Peete mentioned your name.” The kid said nothing and gave no sign he recognized me so I kept talking. “Some guy left a bag at my booth. At the flower show. He was wearing a jacket very much like that one. From the other side of the coffee shop I thought you might be him.” Still no response. I unnecessarily pointed to the table where Connie and the waitress were locked in an animated conversation. Jamal barely acknowledged, just the slightest move of his chin upward. “Okay, well, you’re obviously not him. I’ll go.”

So far my return to New York had had its ups and downs. This was one of the downs. At least in Springfield if you spoke to someone, you had a good shot at getting a civil answer. Here it was fifty-fifty. I suppressed a disappointed shake of my head and walked back to my table, where the conversation was not what you’d call lofty. It was a retelling of the time Soupy Sales, another star on the Wall of Fame, had come in for lunch. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the first time the waitress had told the story, which was anticlimactic after Soupy’s arrival, but it was comforting to know Soupy was “so down-to-earth” despite his exalted status.

Connie and I ordered, mostly to please the waitress, and when the food came, we dutifully picked at it but left most of it on our plates while she discussed fashion. I listened with one ear but was still fixated on another article of clothing—that unusual jacket.