“About five minutes. Most of the men in my world are complete scum. A few are just scummy. Then there’s guys like you and John who are a step above.”
“I’m honored.”
“Don’t be. It’s a small step.” She crushed the cigarette out between her sandal and the boardwalk. “I’ll call you when everything’s arranged.”
I watched her for a little while as she retreated back toward Brighton Beach. Then I turned my attention to the action on the handball courts. A young Puerto Rican kid was cursing as he handed money over to the old geezer Domino had suspected of being on the verge of cardiac arrest. The level of play on the other courts was pretty weak. Most of the players were young and inexperienced, not as good as I had been before I hurt the knee. Now, however, the worst of them could run me off the court. That concept hurt worse than my knee. Time to go.
Waiting for me at the Brooklyn store was a message from on high. Brightman had called, inviting Katy and me to a black-tie Democratic fund-raiser at the Waldorf-Astoria. Klaus let me know that it was more of a demand than a request. Brightman said that Geary had purchased a whole table’s worth of tickets and Katy and I were expected to fill two of the seats. I called Katy to ask if she was up to it. She was up to it, all right, but didn’t stay on the phone very long. She had to run to the cleaners to get the dress she’d worn to Constance’s wedding, and she had to call Cindy to see if she and Aaron could take Sarah for the night.
Katy, unlike me, had been to several of these types of affairs before. It was easy for me to forget-maybe because I wanted to forget-that Katy’s dad, Francis Maloney Sr., had once been a major fund-raising force within the New York State Democratic Party. But his was not the black-tie type of fund-raising. No, my father-in-law was the old-school, nuts-and-bolts type. Everybody who got a state, county, or village job within the confines of Dutchess County unofficially tithed a part of his or her salary to the local Democratic Party. If you wanted a contract to pick up garbage, supply food to the schools, do office cleaning, your firm kicked back a percentage to the local Democratic Party.
There was nothing particularly unique about this sort of thing. It’s the way both parties had operated for the last century. Just try getting a civil service job in Nassau County without listing your party affiliation as Republican and/or tithing a chunk of your income to that same party.
What set Francis Sr. apart from the rest of the political hacks was his ability to broker his results into power that extended beyond his county. He was a man to be feared and reckoned with. Even the sharpies in the city and Albany listened when Francis Sr. spoke. In the end, however, that influence led to his demise. He had gotten a little too powerful, a little too influential, to suit the party bigwigs. So in keeping with the time-honored tradition of state politics, they cut him off at the knees. What only my father-in-law, my ex-friend Rico Tripoli, and I knew was that they had used me to do it.
I had a few hours to kill before going home and retrieving my tuxedo from the back of the closet, so I went to the room next to the office and set about mixing and matching the Spivack and police files. As I had anticipated, the Spivack file was far more exhaustive. They had run complete background checks on nearly everyone they interviewed in connection with the case. There were even surveillance reports on some of Moira Heaton’s former professors from Fordham University. The cops had spoken to many of these same people, but hadn’t been nearly as thorough.
As I had twice before, I copied down some names, numbers, and addresses. To what end, I was unsure. I would be the third, fourth, or fifth person to talk to these people about the same five seconds in each of their lives. By now they would no longer be discussing what they had seen or thought they might have seen, but would simply be repeating lines as an actor might in a play he or she had performed several times. Maybe the problem was that not enough time had elapsed between Moira’s disappearance and now.
I treated myself to a beer out of the office fridge and turned on the radio. I could tell Aaron had been around, because the radio was tuned to an AM news-only station. When I did paperwork, I wanted to relax, listen to music. Aaron relaxed by getting tense about something other than work. You had to love my big brother. Lately, I’d been listening to this new wave station that featured anorexic Englishmen with strange haircuts and synthesizers. Welcome to the eighties!
Klaus called me on the intercom as I was getting up to change channels. Things were slow out front and he wanted to bullshit about what I was going to wear to the Waldorf.
“I was thinking of borrowing your Dead Kennedys shirt,” I said.
“Unfortunately, I’ve gotten rid of that old thing. Too bad really, considering how incredibly inappropriate it would have been at a Democratic fund-raiser.”
“Good point.”
“That’s what you have me for.”
“No. I have you to manage the store. Good-bye, Klaus.”
I finished my beer without bothering to turn the dial. It wouldn’t kill me, I decided, to listen to the news. Depress me, yes, but not kill me. Recently, I had stopped listening to the news, stopped reading the papers. The papers were once a great passion in my life, but the miscarriage had changed all that. It was selfish of me, I know, to turn my back on the rest of the world because of a small tragedy in my life. I had just found it too hard to be constantly reminded.
So now I sat back and listened to the litany of carnage that we New Yorkers had come to accept as news. A street cop had been killed in Brownsville last night when an undercover drug bust went sour. The suspect had been killed too. The trial of a vicious rapist-Ivan the Terrible, the newsman called him-had gotten off to a smooth start at Queens Criminal Court. Ivan the Terrible; very cute. I wondered how the victims felt about the snazzy nickname. But given that four hundred people had been drowned in Bangladesh when their ferry sank and that another mass grave had been discovered in Cambodia, New York was having a relatively good news day.
I was not so foolish as to suppose that my sudden invitation to the Waldorf was the result of my good looks or boyish charms. It was partially a payoff, one of the perks I was to receive for taking the case. Access, casual or otherwise, to the people Katy and I would share drinks with this evening was worth its weight in gold. A quiet word dropped in the proper ear by Geary or Brightman could mean that Irving Prager amp; Sons, Purveyors of Finest Wines and Spirits, would receive a favorable hearing when bidding to supply all fund-raising events within the five boroughs. Or if, for some odd reason, one of the party elite needed a private matter looked into by a discreet ex-cop … It was the classic carrot-and-stick scenario. By having Weintraub and his buddy show up at our stores, Geary had shown me the stick. This evening was all about a close-up view of the carrot.
A smaller, but no less significant, part of the evening’s agenda was to showcase Steven Brightman. I think Geary was anxious to see me see the state senator in action. Maybe the both of them wanted that. I got the sense that Geary and Brightman preferred having true believers on board. Lord knows Brightman’s office workers were fiercely dedicated to him and would, I imagine, have forgiven him his foibles if he dared admit to any. Beyond loyalty and love of family, I wasn’t the true-believer type. They couldn’t've known that, so I couldn’t really blame them for trying.
Thomas and Elizabeth Geary and six of our table-mates were already seated when we arrived. One glance at Mrs. Geary revealed much about her daughter. Constance had inherited her mother’s calm demeanor, indigo eyes, and handsome, if not quite beautiful, looks. At sixty, she might have passed for forty-five. I found myself thinking of Domino and of how soon she might pass for sixty.
“What is it?” Katy prodded, catching me drifting off.
“Nothing important.”
We did the expected round of polite introductions. Everyone was pleased to meet everyone else. Everyone looked lovely. Everyone would forget everyone else’s name in five seconds. Thomas Geary tried to ensure that some names would not drift aimlessly out of people’s ears and into space. He took Katy by the arm, bringing her near his seat. He tapped his water glass with his fork.
“Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen.” He waited until he had the table’s full attention. “This beautiful young woman is indeed the wife of Mr. Moses Prager, but years before she held that honor, Katy here was the daughter of Francis Maloney Sr.”
No one stood. There were no
