Roy smiled benignly. “I want to have at least
“Okay, but don’t forget I have to save a piece for Daddy and one for NorNor.”
It’s not easy to be a stepparent, Sterling thought sympathetically. Marissa always keeps him at arm’s length. If I’d known Roy better before I met him next year, I wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss him as a bore.
But he does drive like a snail with a bad back. Sterling concurred totally with Marissa’s impatient thought, “Step on it. Practice will be over before I get there.”
She’s Nor to a tee, Sterling decided.
When they arrived at the rink, Marissa thanked Roy for driving her, kissed him on the cheek, and waved to the twins before rushing out of the car.
Sterling climbed over Roy Junior’s car seat and saw the surprised expression on the baby’s face. He senses me, he thought. They both are beginning to sense me. Babies have so much awareness of the metaphysical. Too bad it gets lost along the way.
He caught up with Marissa and listened as she chatted animatedly with her friends at the side of the rink.
Miss Carr was the teacher he would see next year at the skating rink in Rockefeller Center. She blew a whistle and ten children, all the others a couple of years older than Marissa, skated onto the ice.
Some of the children were very good, but Marissa was simply outstanding. What a little trouper, Sterling thought as he watched her take a couple of hard spills. She just gets up, shakes herself off, and tries the spin or jump again.
Later, when the children had changed back into their shoes or boots, one of the girls came over to Marissa. “My sister got your dad’s single for Christmas. She wondered if he would mind signing it for her.”
Marissa’s beaming with pride, Sterling thought as he watched and noted with amusement that she tried to sound oh-so-casual when she said, “Oh, sure. My dad likes to sign autographs for my friends.”
“Is he writing a new song now?” the girl asked.
“He’s always writing a new song.”
“Tell him to write a song about us!”
“He’s writing one about me first!” Marissa giggled.
Seven going on twenty-five, and bursting with love for her dad. Sterling sighed. And so near to being separated from him for a long time. Well, I’ve got to be off. He took one last look at Marissa’s glowing smile, then left the rink.
Adjusting his homburg, he started walking back to Billy’s apartment. He was planning to accompany him to his meeting, and was looking forward to being in Manhattan again.
But I’m really getting to know my way around Madison Village, he thought, as his feet crunched in the snow, making a sound only he could hear. I must say it’s a very nice place to live.
“So howd’ya make out when you talked to Johnny one note?” Eddie asked. He was standing behind Junior, who, like a judge about to pass sentence, was sitting upright at his desk.
“Not very well.” Charlie’s hands were drenched in perspiration. He wanted to keep his voice calm but could not. “I spoke to Billy Campbell and offered him the scholarship for his daughter and explained that you would be dismayed if any remarks made in jest were misconstrued.”
“All right, all right, we know what you were gonna say,” Eddie said impatiently. “So what did he say?”
There was no staving off the answer. “He said for me to tell you that he’d pay for his daughter’s education himself, and that he doesn’t know what you mean by joking or lighthearted remarks. Then he slammed down the phone.”
Charlie knew he could not soften Billy’s reaction to the call, that if he tried, the brothers would see through him. The fact that Eddie was asking the questions was a frightening sign that now the next step would be taken. Coercion. And if that didn’t work…
“Get out of here, Charlie,” Junior ordered. “You sicken me. You let this happen.” He looked up at his brother and nodded.
Charlie slunk out of the office. By tonight, Billy Campbell and Nor Kelly would have a warning that might frighten them into silence. Please let them take that warning seriously, he prayed, then shook his head in misery.
Once again he cursed the day fifteen years ago that the Badgett brothers had come to his one-man law office in Queens and asked him to represent them in their purchase of a dry-cleaning chain. I needed the business, so I didn’t ask enough questions about them, he thought. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know the answers. Well, I know them now.
When she reached home, Nor relaxed in the Jacuzzi, washed and blow-dried her hair, and, planning on a nap, dressed in lounging pajamas. Then Billy’s phone call destroyed all thought of sleep.
Her throat closing, she listened as Billy related his conversation with “a representative of Badgett Enterprises.”
“I called that FBI agent, Rich Meyers, and left a message for him. Then I called Sean, but he’s out too. I waited to call you, Mom, because I hate to upset you, but you have to know what’s going on.”
“Of course I have to know about it. Billy, somehow those people found out that we were in that outer office. Maybe they have hidden cameras.”
“Maybe. Or maybe someone spotted us coming out of there.”
Nor realized she was trembling. “Do you know who it was on the phone?”
“He didn’t give his name, but I think it might have been that guy who told us what to sing when we got there yesterday.”
“I remember him. Kind of nervous and weasely-looking.”
“That’s the one. Look, I’d better get moving. I’m taking the three o’clock train into Manhattan.”
“Billy, be careful.”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Break a leg.’ ”
“I already did.”
“That’s right, you did. See you later, Mom.”
Mechanically, Nor replaced the receiver on the cradle. Break a leg. She had worked in a nightclub where the owner was behind in his payments to someone like the Badgetts. A broken leg had been his first warning to pay up.
And what didn’t seem to have occurred to Billy yet was that the caller had talked about Marissa. Will the Badgetts try to get to Billy and me through Marissa? Nor agonized.
She dialed Sean O’Brien’s number, hoping against hope that she’d reach him. He knew a lot about the Badgetts. Maybe he could tell her what they were likely to do next. We’ve already given statements, she thought. Even if we wanted to, how could we possibly take them back?
She knew the answer. It wasn’t that they
I always used to dress in a suit when I had a business meeting, Sterling thought as he followed Billy onto the three o’clock train to Manhattan.
For his appointment with the recording company executives, Billy had chosen vintage jeans, a loose-fitting dark blue shirt, boots, and a leather jacket.
I’ll never get used to these new styles. But then again, in the 1880s, when Mother was a young woman, she wore laced corsets, high-button shoes, bonnets, and floor-length dresses. Sterling sighed, suddenly nostalgic for the serenity of the afterlife, where concerns about clothing simply didn’t exist.
He took the aisle seat next to Billy, who had found a vacant window seat. I always wanted the window seat too when I traveled by train, Sterling remembered. When Annie and I went to visit our friends in Westport, I always grabbed the window seat, and Annie never complained. I wonder if that’s what the Heavenly Council meant when they called me “passive-aggressive”?
