many items on our wish list. We need computers, and desks for one room are $5000. Audio-visual equipment is $1000, and we still need $6000 to paint the cafeteria.”
“Really, hmm.” Mary tuned her out, searching for the other two of Bobby’s friends, cross-checking their senior photos to see if they mentioned him. She skimmed the first names and found one. Paul Meloni. He mentioned the Bad to the Bone gang, too. Bingo!
“Of course, if those amounts aren’t within your means, we’d be happy for any amount you can spare. It all adds up, and I know you understand that much of your professional success is due to the education and values you learned here.”
“I sure do,” Mary said, but she was turning the pages, looking for Scuzzy.
“So, do you think you’re in a position to make a contribution? I hate to be so direct, but it’s rare that I get a captive in my office. You’re like the little fly in my web.” Mrs. Edgar laughed. “May I put you down for a hundred dollars?”
Mary lucked out on the next page. John Scaramuzzo. He had to be Scuzzy. She set down the yearbooks, having identified all three members of the Bad to the Bone gang. She felt like cheering. “Yes!”
“Wonderful!” Mrs. Edgar turned to the printer, slid out some sheets, and handed her the address lists, across the desk. “Don’t forget these.”
“Thanks so much.” Mary could barely hide her excitement, and Mrs. Edgar beamed.
“You’re welcome. Now, did you bring your checkbook, dear?”
Huh? Mary blinked.
Fifteen minutes later, she burst through the front doors of the school with the addresses, a hundred bucks lighter.
Hurrying from her past into her present.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
M ary found it almost impossible to believe that the short, overweight accountant in a Bluetooth and an Italian suit was Jimmy 4G Waites. He had a salesman’s grin, but had aged more than his thirty-odd years; two deep wrinkles divided his eyebrows, and soft jowls draped his mouth like a pug’s. His hair was almost gone, with a brown-gray fringe encircling a thick, flattish head.
“I understand, but you’re not hearing me.” Waites spoke to the air, his brown eyes darting around the large, bright office, alighting on nothing in particular. “You wouldn’t be doing this if he wasn’t a friend. He’s asking you to invest five mil? Tell him you’re comfortable with one. You can afford to lose one.”
Mary waited in a leather sling chair opposite a glistening glass desk. The accounting firm had three floors in swanky Mellon Center, and Waites’s office was beautifully appointed with Danish modern furniture. A huge square of window overlooked the mirrored skyline, the reflections of the skyscrapers dull in the overcast sky. Mary had introduced herself to Waites’s secretary as an old high school friend, and Waites had gestured her in just as he picked up the phone, waving his fleshy hand with enthusiasm, thinking she was someone he was supposed to recognize.
Waites was saying, “Then if it doesn’t work out, which we know it probably won’t, you two stay friends. I always say, you can have bad deals with good people, but you can’t have good deals with bad people. Got it? Good. See ya.” He pressed his Bluetooth to hang up. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay.” Mary introduced herself. “I went to Goretti, graduated the same year you did, from Neumann.”
“You look familiar.”
“I had braces, glasses, and an inferiority complex.”
Waites laughed. “That makes two of us.”
“But I’m here about Bobby Mancuso.”
Waites’s smile faded. “I read that he was killed last night. I couldn’t believe it.”
“I know. You two used to be friends, right?”
“Hold on, not recently.” Waites’s gaze darted nervously to the hall outside his office, then he lowered his voice. “I haven’t talked to Bobby since the summer after graduation. That was a long time ago. I heard he got in with the Mob, but I didn’t know anything about that. Live by the sword, die by the sword.” Waites focused on her, frowning behind costly rimless glasses. “Wait a minute. Who did you say you were, anyway?”
“I was a friend of his, I don’t know if he mentioned me. I tutored him and we went out a few times.”
“I don’t remember your name, but my family only moved here in the second half of senior year.” Waites rubbed his face. “I saw in the paper they think he kidnapped Trish Gambone. I didn’t even know he was still seeing her. Is that what this is about?”
“Yes.” Mary cut to the chase. “I’m trying to find Trish. She’s still missing. I thought if you had stayed in touch, you might know-”
“Like I said, we didn’t stay in touch. Not at all.” Waites sounded like he was speaking for the record, though none existed. “I don’t know what he did with her, if that’s where you’re going.”
Mary switched tacks. “Okay, that aside, I’m trying to locate a house he bought, where he could have taken her.”
“I didn’t know he bought a house.” Waites looked outside again. “Look, we didn’t stay in touch, as I said, and I don’t want to get involved.”
“Did he ever talk about a place he went, a place he liked especially?”
“No.”
“Did he have any hobbies, that you knew of?”
“Does boozing count?” Waites snapped, and Mary faked a smile.
“Did he drink, even then?”
“Oh yeah. Too much, and he was a mean drunk. Yelled. Screamed. Not good. Punched a hole through a wall more than once.”
“Scary.” Mary shuddered.
“Yes.”
“Was there anyplace you went together, back then? In the yearbook, he mentioned Wildwood.” She took the photocopied page from her purse and handed it to him. “Does that help?”
“Bad to the Bone, eh?” Waites eyed the photo, reminiscing for a minute. “It’s sad.”
“It sure is.” Mary was liking him better. “It all turned out so well for you, and obviously not for him. I wonder how that happens.”
“I’ll tell you how.” Waites looked up, his thin lips a grim line. “I had a great dad. Bobby didn’t. That guy was a jerk.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He just was.” Waites tossed the page back to Mary. “He put Bobby down all the time. Favored the real brother, who was a thug, always in and out of trouble. Bobby’s house was hell. He did everything he could to get out of it. It’s the reason he played ball, I think. He never talked about it, but you could tell. Except for the sister. He was tight with his sister.”
“Rosaria.”
“Right.” Waites nodded. “Bobby was a great guy, a quiet guy, but he kept a lot inside. You knew that, if you knew him. We did go to Wildwood, once. Rented a house there one summer, bussed tables. Kids gettin’ crazy down the shore, you know.”
“Where was the house?”
“God knows.” Waites scoffed. “I doubt it’s even there anymore.”
“Did you ever go anywhere else, back then or later?”
“No.”
“Did he say he liked Wildwood or anything like that?” Mary was thinking of Rosaria, in Brick. “Did he mention liking the Jersey shore?”
“No way.”
