“Not really, but can you be a little more specific? Even with good hearing, it helps to know what you’re listening for.”
Clever man. I knew we’d eventually get to where we now were. I just hadn’t counted on it being so soon. I’d spent the better part of my sleepless last night trying to sort through everything I had on my plate, never mind the kiss.
“Chief McDonald had a wire installed in an interview room at the Six-O.”
Fishbein’s eyes got big and greedy. It was all he could do not to salivate. “A wire, huh? And you know this how?”
“I heard a tape.”
“Of what?”
“For now, that’s my business and it’s beside the point. What I need to know is why.”
“You’re presupposing this wasn’t authorized,” said the D.A., taking a second sip of his coffee. He didn’t like this one any better than the first.
“I’m not presupposing anything. I’m eliminating possibilities. So, can you find out?”
“I can.” Fishbein stood over me. He liked that. Suited his personality much better than speaking to dairy farmers. “I’ll be in touch.”
I didn’t bother shaking his hand, nor did I wish him well. The better I got to know the D.A., the more I hoped he’d get hit by a bus someday. I stayed and finished my coffee. It was bitter, but not so much as Fishbein’s. His lips hadn’t touched my cup.
Like a lot of towns on Long Island, Massapequa, or Matzohpizza, as the locals jokingly called it, was a popular destination on the white flight express. So many city cops, firemen, and school teachers fled there in the ’60s and ’70s that people said Massapequa was Algonquin for civil servant. If you screamed “Help, police!” at midnight, half the porch lights in town went on. One of those porch lights had once belonged to Larry McDonald-Larry having made the move to the Burger
Long Island gave me the chills to begin with, and the thought of visiting Larry’s old house wasn’t making me feel any better. I parked in front of the tidy colonial on Harmony Drive in Massapequa Park and took a slow walk to the door. Yeah, even out here the stratification of neighborhoods had taken hold. The collars were bluer in North Massapequa than in plain old Massapequa, and the houses were a little nicer and the lawns a bit more trim in Massapequa Park than in Massapequa proper. But if you had some
The first thing I did was look at the numbers on the front of the house when a squat man of sixty pulled back the door. Who did I expect, Larry McDonald’s fucking ghost? It’s weird how humans are so good at denying reality. I suppose I thought Margaret would answer. Maybe hoped is the better word.
“Is Margaret home?”
“She’s not around. Who are you?” he asked, but without guile.
“Moe Prager. I’m-”
“Sure, sure, Moe. I heard all about you. You were friends with Marge’s first husband. Come in. Come in.” I stepped inside. The interior of the house was as clean and tidy as the outside. “Frank Spinelli,” he said, offering me a thick hand. I took it. Had the grip of a working man, but the skin of a retiree. His accent was Bronx Italian, maybe with a taste of the old country mixed in.
“Pleasure to meet you, Frank.”
“Same here. Glad for the company. Gave up the pizzeria a few years back, but I can’t get used to this leisure thing. I tried golf a little bit, but I figured if I wanted to suffer so much, I’d just stick pins in my eyes. I’m home so much, sometimes I think I make Marge a little
I liked this guy. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“For almost forty years I’m working twelve-hour days, and then this beautiful young woman walks into my shop and she takes my heart. She come in for calzone and winds up with a husband. Life is crazy, no? Hey, I’m being rude. You wanna drink? A little homemade red?”
“Sure, but only with some ice and lemon slices.”
That stopped Frank Spinelli in his tracks. “Hey, who taught you how to drink homemade like a guinea?”
“Come on in the kitchen.”
Frank Spinelli stood at the island with two jam jars filled with ice cubes and lemon wedges. He poured the red wine into the jars from a big jug. He corked the jug and slid a jar my way.
“
“
“So, Moe, you know your friend Larry, he really hurt Marge.”
“I know, Frank.”
“Why did he do that? Marge is a beautiful woman, a good woman.”
“The best. But Larry’s loss was your gain, right?”
For the first time since I stepped inside the house, Frank stopped smiling.
“Marge, she loves me, but she never loves me like Larry. I knew that when I married her. That is a once in your life thing, the way she loved Larry. Me, I’m a chubby old wop from the Bronx who respects a woman, who knows how to treat her right, but I never fool myself. My poppa,” Frank said, crossing himself, “he always said the only real fools were people who tricked themselves. I’m no fool, Moe.”
“No, Frank, I don’t suppose you are.”
“So why you wanna talk to Marge, you don’t mind me asking?”
“About Larry. Something was going on there. I knew Larry was an ambitious bastard, and he could do some incredibly cold and calculating things, but suicide. .”
“Marge, too. She don’t understand.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to her. Maybe she knows something she isn’t aware of. You know, something that happened a long time ago.”
“Sure. Sure. Makes sense.”
We went out to their back deck and stood in silence, drinking our wine and watching the cardinals and robins darting from branch to branch. Before I left, Frank promised he would have Margaret call me. We shook hands and said our goodbyes, but Frank wasn’t quite finished. With the front door nearly closed behind me, I could hear Frank mutter, “Why did he hurt her like that?”
It was a good question. Larry seemed to have left a lot of those behind.
I made one more stop on my way back to Brooklyn. I pulled off the L.I.E. at Queens Boulevard and drove into Rego Park. Mandrake Towers was a ten-unit apartment building complex. The buildings were red brick boxes that were as homey as an off-ramp and as cozy as a prison cell, but I wasn’t apartment shopping, thank God!
The security office was in the basement of Building 5. Although the incinerator had been replaced years ago by a garbage compactor, the stink of the fire and ash remained. Didn’t matter how many coats of fresh paint were laid over the cinder block walls, it seemed the odor was there to stay. Maybe it was in my head. My friend Israel Roth, forty-five years removed from the nightmare of Auschwitz, says he can still smell burning flesh in pure mountain air. He told me once, “There’s no forgetting some things. Some things, Mr. Moe, demand to be remembered.”
Who was I to disagree?
The security office was unchanged since the first time I’d seen it in 1983, but the man behind the desk had grown a little grayer, a little thicker around the gut. He no longer wore a trooper’s hat and there were now shiny captain’s bars on the collar of his khaki shirt.
“Shit!” he said looking up from his book. “Security sure do suck in this place they let broken-down old white people like you in here.”
“Security’s fine, but their leadership’s a little shaky.”
“Y’all don’t want me to come around this desk and kick your scrawny little Jewish ass up and down the
