Slugfest

“I don’t,” I said. “Not even for a leather jacket, but two people are dead. You might be in danger and that jacket might hold a clue.”

“How can it be a clue if I’ve had it for two days and he died more recently than that?”

Jamal’s voice was rising from the strain we were all feeling. It could have been an accident, like Otis. Like Nikki. One accident I could accept—but three?

“What else did you and Bleimeister talk about?” I said.

“Nothing important. I was wearing a Mets shirt. Bleimeister said he was from Jersey but closer to Pennsylvania so he was a Phillies fan. He said he’d outgrown da shore and was going away once he picked up what this person owed him.” They talked some more. Books, girls, Xbox.

“Oh, yeah, he said most people went to Atlantic City to strike it rich. He’d tried that, but it didn’t work. Instead, it looked like one of his old summer jobs might do that. That’s it. I don’t know anything else.”

Rolanda and I were hardly experienced interrogators, but what he said had the ring of truth. Again we advised him to go to the police, not thinking for a minute he’d actually do it.

“Can you talk to your parents about this?”

“I live with my Grams. She’s old, diabetic. She’ll stroke out. I haven’t done anything, except for sneaking into the building. That’s no big deal—I didn’t break in.”

“No other family?” I asked.

“I got a cousin in North Carolina.”

“What about Ms. Peete?” He shook his head. The mention of her name turned all his features downward. He didn’t want to disappoint the woman who’d put such faith in him.

Jamal was surely one of the last people to see Garland Bleimeister alive and that meant he might know more than he thought he did. Just as we had, someone else could make the same assumption, and they might not be a couple of nice ladies dressed for a night on the town. They could be the same people already responsible for two deaths. I asked Jamal if he’d be around the next day, and he shrugged.

“Man, I don’t know what I’m doing in the next fifteen minutes.”

“Whatever you decide, be careful. And just to be on the safe side, you might not want to wear that jacket for a while. But don’t throw it away. If Garland’s death wasn’t an accident…” I didn’t want to finish the thought. Jamal stripped off the jacket and hoodie and put them back on, this time with the zippered sweatshirt over the jacket. He jogged to the fire exit and disappeared down the stairs without another word.

Rolanda and I watched him go. “What part of Connecticut did you say you were from?”

“You realize you’re engaging in a form of profiling,” I said. “Just because you’re from the hood doesn’t make you Foxy Brown. Let’s go find my shoes. They’re borrowed and very expensive.”

I passed on a return trip to El Quixote and hailed a cab to Lucy’s apartment. My cash and my keys were out well before the ten-minute ride was over, the cash to pay and get out fast, and the keys because that was a New York habit. As soon as the cab pulled away, another car door opened. It was on the driver’s side of the vehicle parked in front of Lucy’s brownstone. Black car, vanity plates that I couldn’t quite figure out; I imprinted the number and tried to read the make of the car in case I had to give a description later on from a hospital bed. My taxi had sped away. I was alone. For a moment I froze, then I saw a familiar hulking figure striding toward me.

Whatever else you had to say about him, Guy Anzalone knew how to make an entrance.

Thirty-seven

“Did you say anything to her?”

“And hello to you, too.”

“Did you tell her?”

“What’s there to tell? We shared some cashews in the lobby of a very public hotel with your wife upstairs, not five minutes away. That’s hardly the stuff of tabloid newspapers.” I was talking tough but not really feeling the part. What was he doing here? How did he even know where I was staying? Had I mentioned it and forgotten in my champagne buzz? Happily, whatever dramatic showdown Guy Anzalone had built up in his mind while waiting for me evaporated. I credited the red dress.

“You’re getting a lot of mileage out of that outfit. Most women I know wouldn’t wear the same dress two nights in a row.” It didn’t seem to bother Guy and his eyes moved appreciatively over the spandex. “She was pretty ticked off,” he said.

“By she, I take it you mean Connie. And that’s my fault, how? This was a big night for her. Maybe she was disappointed you weren’t there.” I was cold and hungry and wanted the conversation to end. I glanced up at J. C.’s window and terrace garden. If it had been warmer, she might have had the windows open and would have been able to hear us in case Guy got too friendly and I needed to borrow her door bar.

“Anything else?”

“Why are you so nasty to me? What did I ever do to you besides buy one of those crazy Lego sculptures and compliment you on your dress?”

“I know your wife, and you’re hitting on me.”

“First of all, I’m not necessarily hitting on you. Second, does that mean you’d say yes if you didn’t know my wife?”

Even I had to crack a smile at that one. “Look, I’m tired and hungry, and please—no ‘bed’ or ‘I can fill you up’ comments.”

He agreed to keep the frisky chat to a minimum and I agreed to walk around the corner with him to Carmine’s, a pizza joint he described as not half bad. Given his proclivity for understatement, I took that to mean it was one of the best in the city.

“They still sell by the slice. I can remember when a slice and a Coke was fifty cents,” he said. Good manners kept me from asking how long ago that was.

We sat in orange plastic chairs and I looked for a clean place on the Formica table for Lucy’s handbag and the flower show directory Rolanda and I had retrieved from the booth.

Our slices came—pepperoni for me, two with extra cheese and a calzone chaser for him; he’d already had dinner. The waiter brought two large Diet Cokes.

“I cut back wherever it hurts the least. I don’t want to get too big.” He ran his hands over his substantial belly in a way that perversely seemed like flirting.

“That reminds me. I think I saw a friend of yours tonight. After hours at the convention center—Fat Frank?”

“After hours? I’m shocked. Maybe he forgot something. You should be careful. It’s not always safe in those big buildings late at night. You could get in trouble.”

The slice stalled inches from my lips. I put it down and wiped my hands on a wad of paper napkins.

“C’mon. What am I saying that your mother didn’t tell you? You should just be careful, is all.”

He’d wolfed down his two slices and waited for his calzone. “You know, I dated a girl named Calzone once. Nice girl, but too many people made fun of our names. It never would have worked out.” He picked up the directory and spun it in his hands, tapping the spine on the table each time the book made a complete revolution.

“You catch any other suckers tonight, or am I the only one who bought something?” I assured him he was in rarefied company and none other than the famous Mrs. Moffitt had been interested in the piece that he and Connie had purchased. She had to settle for something similar but even more expensive.

“I’m glad you didn’t show us that one. That was a little slippery of you the other night.” He wagged a finger at me. “That’s okay. She’ll be happy.”

He rarely used his wife’s name but referred to her as she as if that made her somehow less real. He continued to spin the book and I worried he’d drop it on his greasy plate and I’d wind up smelling like garlic for the rest of the flower show, the way Nikki had smelled of fish fertilizer.

“She made me take an ad in this thing. She even sicced this broad on me. Madon’, good-looking girl but wouldn’t shut up until I took the ad. And she kept harping on certain aspects of my work. I do construction, lend a little money. So what? So does Citibank. Doesn’t make me John Gotti.”

I assumed this last she was Kristi Reynolds. Maybe all women were