Fiddlers

One: Jerry’s elevator wasn’t reaching the top floor; he was what the police in this city categorized as an EDP, for Emotionally Disturbed Person.

Two: Jerry believed the church was under investigation for something or other.

Three: Jerry’s sister didn’t want him talking to cops.

Which made talking to him seem all the more imperative.

Ollie supposed he could knock on a few doors, ask a few questions, and zero in on which apartment Jerry and his sister lived in. But then he would have to question Jerry in the presence of the harridan sister, and he would prefer not having to do that; he was still afraid of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, and he’d seen that movie only on television. So he waited across the street from their building: What goes in must come out; what goes up must come down.

Meanwhile, all he could do was think about Patricia Gomez. Should he change their date from Saturday night to Sunday morning? Andy Parker said that a cozy little Saturday night dinner at home would set off a real Panty Block alarm. So maybe he should call her and change it to a Sunday brunch if indeed he was planning on getting in her pants, which he guessed he was, else why was he thinking such evil thoughts about the girl, and why was there a sudden erection in his own pants right this very minute?

Oh well.

It also bothered him that Andy Parker thought he was losing his essential Ollie-ness, which he certainly did not wish to do; he liked himself too much. Then again, Patricia seemed to like him a lot, too. Especially now that he’d lost ten pounds. So, when you thought about it, what would be so wrong about two consensual, non- homosexual human beings joining together for some fine and fancy Saturday night - oops.

Here they came.

Walking out of their building together, Jerry and his sister with her graying red hair flying around her head like a halo of bats.

* * * *

Alicia Hendricks’s old neighborhood was beginning to feel like home to Parker and Genero. They even stopped in at Rocco’s for lunch that Monday, where they had the clams Posillipo and another chat with Geoffrey Lucantonio, who was eager to tell them more about his derring-do with the then-fifteen-year-old Alicia, but they opted for other more pertinent information.

They were here in the Laurelwood section of Riverhead again, trying to track down any of Alicia’s former classmates at Warren G. Harding High, which the Commish might have considered fiddling around but which nonetheless had been her last educational venue before she sailed off into the wider world of waitressing, manicuring, sales repping, and eventual dope-dealing. Geoffrey told them that not many of Harding’s alumni still lived in the old hood. Although the foundation stones were still here -

Our Lady of Grace Church…

Roger Mercer Junior High…

Warren G. Harding High…

- the neighborhood was now predominately Spanish, and erstwhile natives of Jewish, Italian, or Irish descent had long ago fled for greener pastures. One holdout was a woman whose parents had owned a house here ‘when the neighborhood was still good,’ Geoffrey said, not recognizing he was slurring the people who currently lived here. She’d inherited the house when her parents died, and was still reluctant to give it up.

‘Her name is Phoebe Jennings,’ he said. ‘Her and her husband come in here all the time. I forget what her maiden name was back then. She lives in the two-story brick behind St. Mary’s.’

* * * *

Phoebe Jennings still bore a faint resemblance to the photo of the plain eighteen-year-old girl in Harding’s yearbook. She remembered Alicia Hendricks well…

‘Well, who could ever forget her?’ she said, and rolled her eyes.

They were sitting under a striped umbrella in the backyard of the house, the yearbook open in her lap. In the near distance, the bells of St. Mary’s…

Good title, Genero thought.

… chimed the hour.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

The way Phoebe remembers it…

‘My maiden name was Phoebe Mears,’ she told the detectives. ‘That’s the name in the yearbook there…’

Tapping the photo of a young girl in eyeglasses, a tentative smile on her mouth. Phoebe Jennings still wore eyeglasses, but she was not smiling as she remembered those days back in high school.

‘Alicia was the most popular girl in the class,’ she said. ‘Gorgeous, drove all the boys crazy. Well, everyone wanted to be near her. All of us. She just radiated this… glow, you know? I realize now it was a kind of hyper-sexuality… well, we were all so young, you know, so very young.’

‘How well did you know her, Mrs. Jennings?’ Parker asked.

‘Oh, not well at all. I’m sorry, did I give that impression? I was hardly in the same league as Alicia and her Chosen Few… well, look at my picture. I was what kids today call a nerd. The In Crowd wanted nothing to do with me. This tight little circle of girls, you know, maybe five or six of them? Flocked around Alicia as if she were the queen bee. Hoping some of her allure would rub off on them. Well, I hoped so, too, I admit it. I’d have given anything to be like Alicia Hendricks. And yet…”

She looked at her photo in the yearbook again.

‘You’re here because she met with a violent death. I’ve been happily married for almost thirty years now. My two daughters are married, too, both of them college graduates. My husband is a decent, faithful, hardworking man, and we live a block away from the church where we worship every Sunday. So does it matter that forty years ago I was a wallflower at Our Lady of Grace’s Friday night dances? Does it matter that the boys stood on line waiting for a chance to dance with Alicia or even one of her friends? Where are any of those other girls now? Are they as happy as I am?’

‘Would you know where any of them are now, Mrs. Jennings?’ Genero asked.

* * * *

Holding tight to her brother’s hand, the graying redhead led him up the street, Ollie a respectably invisible distance behind them. Damn if she wasn’t leading him into a small coffee shop. Were the siblings about to enjoy a good lunch, which Ollie himself could use along about now? His stomach growling in agreement, he took up a watchful position across the street, and was surprised when the pair came out some ten minutes later, each carrying a brown paper bag.

He watched.

The sister kissed Jerry on the cheek. Gave him some sisterly advice, Jerry nodding. Kissed him again in farewell, and then marched off, leaving him alone on the sidewalk.

Ollie waited.

A moment later, Jerry was in motion, brown paper bag clutched tight in his right hand. Was he heading back to the apartment? If so, Ollie would follow him right upstairs this time. No sister, no problem. But instead, he walked right past his building, and kept on walking south, crossing under the elevated-train structure on Dover Plains Avenue, and then past the next street over, something called Holman Avenue, and then to the street bordering the park, and onto a footpath leading into the park itself, Ollie some fifteen feet behind him now, and rapidly closing the distance between them. The moment Jerry found a bench and sat on it, Ollie moved in. Even before Jerry could reach into the brown paper bag, Ollie was sitting beside him.

‘Hello, Jerry,’ he said.

Jerry turned to him. Blue eyes opening wide in recognition and fear.

‘I didn’t do nothing,’ he said.

‘I know you didn’t,’ Ollie said. ‘What’ve you got there, a sandwich?’

Jerry looked puzzled for a moment. Then he realized Ollie was referring to the paper bag on his lap. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And a Coca-Cola.’

‘What kind of sandwich?’ Ollie asked.