Slugfest Read online

  When the public address announcer made his first feeble attempt to eject us, all the kinks had been ironed out. The heavy machinery was gone, the carpets were in place, and the industrial-looking building had been transformed into the series of New York gardens the organizers had hoped to inspire.

  And while we’d been tinkering with our displays, Cinderella’s mice had been hard at work. Temporary bars and buffet tables had materialized, and in twenty-four hours they’d be filled with finger foods and beverages of every stripe. If Connie Anzalone was correct, some attendees were already laying out their clothing. I hadn’t seen her all day and secretly hoped she’d forgotten my promise to have a drink with her.

  “Leave business cards out,” David said, as he packed up. “Business-to-business sales are key. Other exhibitors walk around at off-hours, and they can be some of your best customers.” It was a good tip, and I spent the last fifteen minutes before lights-out doing as David had advised.

  I wandered haphazardly and found myself in an aisle dedicated to single plant specimens—the Gloxinia Society, the Hosta Association. The plants were impossibly perfect, like pictures in a White Flower Farm or Park Seed catalog—no brown edges, no yellowing leaves, and no telltale nibbles. Like a kid, I wanted to touch them to see if they were real.

  Connie was gone, so I poked around and inspected her garden entry. Coney Island was one of the most famous beaches in the world, although it was anyone’s guess whether or not the creatures and plants Connie depicted could be found there. It didn’t matter. The display was fanciful, whimsical, and the tiniest bit tacky, like the woman herself. As I leaned in for a closer look at her botanical version of a Whack-A-Mole game, I noticed two men in the shadows checking me out. Maybe they were the mob bodyguards Nikki thought Connie’s husband would bring in to protect her plants from human pests. Both men were slim enough to be almost hidden by the trio of rosemary topiaries from a penthouse garden display. I moved on.

  There was no major category without a Moffitt entry. I didn’t see how she found the time to submit all the entries I saw. I had only covered one quarter of the room before a loud slam and a dimming of lights told me it really was time to leave.

  The two men had disappeared. Only one other person was in sight, a young girl in a polo shirt and khakis taking pictures of a booth designed to re-create the Feast of San Gennaro. I didn’t buy the white hydrangeas as zeppole, but gave the entry extra points for imagination.

  On my way out, I swung by the horticultural information booth for handouts on deer-resistant plants and others on hostas, amaryllis, and clivia. I grabbed another called “Poisonous to Pets” as a goodwill gesture to Lucy’s downstairs neighbor. I was tucking them in the outer pocket of my laptop case when a woman I hadn’t seen approached. She shoved handfuls of assorted flyers in her canvas bag. I realized I was staring.

  “Getting some for friends?” I asked.

  “Stacking them at my own booth as a service to show attendees.” She sounded defensive, as if I were going to report her to the flyer police. Hell, I didn’t care.

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “Just doing whatever it takes.”

  She handed me her card and proceeded to tell me her story.

  Seventeen

  The woman’s name was Terry Ward, Bagua Designs, certified feng shui practitioner, Dix Hills, New York.

  In the 1980s, as feng shui worked its way into America’s lexicon, Terry thought she’d struck gold. She’d always known her obsessive desire to move the furniture was more than just neurotic behavior. It was her struggle to, in her words, perfect her surroundings. And now there was a name for it. If only her husband were still around so she could say I told you so.

  Terry had signed up for a three-session course at the Learning Annex, and before it even ended she’d ordered cards for her new venture. Back then, it was easy to be considered an expert when few people could even pronounce feng shui, much less tell you which way they thought their chi should be flowing.

  She worked the flower, crafts, and flea markets in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and the fairs in all five boroughs and Long Island, cobbling together a business from the sale of a staple-bound self-published book and bits and pieces collected from tag and yard sales.

  On one fateful trip to the Elephant’s Trunk flea market in Connecticut, Terry reconnected with an old high school friend Kyle DiMucci, who in a fruitless attempt to escape his churlish wife, Doreen, traveled to all markets, preferring the ones farthest from home, where he sold classic television ephemera, mostly lunch boxes and board games. One thing led to another. When Kyle’s wife found out, she threatened to divorce him and torch what remained of his beloved Dark Shadows memorabilia collection. That dried up the flea market scene for Terry.

  To refill her pipeline with low-cost feng shui–like tchotchkes Terry found a Chinese wholesaler of resin fountains, chimes, and mirrors. The merchandise had a smaller profit margin than the junk she had bought for a dollar and resold for ten, but avoiding flea markets greatly reduced the chances of bumping into the incendiary Mrs. DiMucci.

  “You gotta leave, ladies.” The security guard looked tired and bored. She swung her badge and lanyard around mindlessly over and over again. Unlike Rolanda, she appeared to be an uninterested part-timer filling the extended hours. I didn’t think she cared one lick if we got locked in or backed up a trailer and left with a load of stolen merchandise. But Terry must have been worried she’d get in trouble for taking the flyers, so she scurried off without even saying good-bye.

  I walked through the empty convention center hallway to the down escalator and saw Rolanda Knox leaving the security office. “Wait up,” she yelled, but my gloved hand was already on the moving handrail and I’d already started descending. She couldn’t possibly need to see my credentials now. I tapped my fingers and pretended to inspect my coffee-stained glove.

  She hurried down the escalator and caught up with me at the bottom.

  “Underneath this jacket, I swear, I’m wearing my badge.”

  “You crazy?” she said. “I want to ask you something. You ever see that kid again—the one from yesterday who tried to sneak in?”

  I’d almost asked her the same question. “Why?”

  She waited for me to answer.

  “I haven’t, but it’s possible he called me.” I told her about the phone messages Babe had delivered and the one I’d left him.

  Rolanda asked if I’d checked the message board.

  “I’ve been pretty busy today.”

  Rolanda took me by the arm and led me to the up escalator. “Why are we doing this?” I asked.

  “I saw something that might interest you.”

  Upstairs, past the temporary bookstore, the press room, and the members’ lounge was a long corkboard on the wall between meeting rooms that would soon be filled with people learning wreath-making and bonsai techniques. Most of the notices were four-color promotional materials for products or services with the occasional “Mary Ellen, meet me at Herbaceous Perennials 101.” Good place for an ad. I made a note to print out a picture of one of Primo’s pieces and put it on the board with our booth number. Rolanda was searching. “I hope someone didn’t pin anything on top of it.” Then I saw what she’d been looking for.

  Do you still have my bag?

  Please call me. G.B.

  Eighteen

  “I don’t get it. If he was here, why didn’t he just find me? I left him my booth number.”

  “’Cause he didn’t have no badge. Do we need to go over that again? Another guard gave him the boot yesterday afternoon. I’m just glad the kid was here. I had a premonition about him. My mother had the gift. In our old neighborhood, she knew who was gonna die right before it happened.”

  Given Rolanda’s size and temperament, it occurred to me her mom might have been a hit woman, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “I have a little of it, too,” she said. “The gift. You don’t believe me, right?”
>
  “What is it?” I asked, hoping I didn’t look too skeptical and she didn’t see whatever woo woo glow she’d seen around the kid around me.

  “Hard to define,” she said. “When I saw the accident this morning, I thought it might be the Happy Valley kid, but it was Otis Randolph, one of the overnight workers.”

  “Is he all right?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t even make it to the hospital. Looks like he broke his neck. The escalator turns off automatically, so maybe he was on it and it jolted to a stop, throwing him down the stairs. The police aren’t sure what happened—I’m just guessing.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s horrible. Were you friends?”

  “I knew him. At first when I saw the jeans and boots, I thought it might be our boy who sneaked in after the kerfluffle yesterday.”

  Kerfluffle. I liked that. And hadn’t she referred to herself as a martinet the other day? Between her psychic abilities and her colorful vocabulary, Rolanda was getting more interesting.

  I dialed the number on the bulletin board. The same one Babe had given me. It kicked into voice mail, and I left a message, saying the bag was at booth 1142, if he could get in (Rolanda was still within earshot). Otherwise he should call me and I’d arrange to meet him. Out of habit I left my cell phone and my home phone numbers.

  “Look at this—you’re a popular girl. Here’s another one.”

  Rolanda plucked a pink index card from the board. It was from Connie.

  Hi, Paula, Didn’t have your number but hope you see this. Meet me at the St. George at 7 p.m. Connie A.

  The I’s were dotted with circles. Instead of periods, she made little daisy-shaped characters. Aaaay.

  I checked my watch. “You could pretend you didn’t see it,” Rolanda said.

  “She’d know I was lying. I’m a terrible liar.” The last thing I wanted to do was have drinks with a woman who made up her own punctuation marks, but it was a good hotel with a great bar and she was buying.

  By that time the escalators had been turned off and Rolanda and I walked to the top of the staircase. The reception didn’t start until 5:30 P.M. the next day, and I considered going back onto the floor for the bag, but Rolanda stopped me.

  “Don’t bother. These doors are locked.”

  “All right, since you have all the answers, what do people wear to this shindig tomorrow night?”

  “Last year we had an international theme. People had all sorts of getups. One woman wore a three-foot headdress that was supposed to be Brazilian. She had to sit in a chair and be carried in because she couldn’t fit through the doorway standing up.”

  “Was she wearing her badge?”

  “Damn skippy.”

  Nineteen

  The St. George had one of the best bars in the city. The murals; the low ceiling, which held in decades of New York life; the music; the fashionable cocktails of the time; and the cigarette and cigar smoke from bygone days that had yellowed the walls and given the room a warm, cavelike quality. It was the kind of place that made me want to order a sidecar or a sloe gin fizz, even though I had no idea what they were. And the St. George had the best mixed nuts of any establishment in the city. I loved the place, despite the fact that the house detective once took me for a hooker. That was the anecdote I used as an icebreaker when I joined Connie at her corner table.

  “He thought you were a pro?” Connie asked, temporarily halting her low-key gum chewing.

  Just out of school, I had been working as an assistant buyer for a catalog company. An older salesman invited me for a drink, and I arrived early. I wasn’t there five minutes when a portly, florid guy in a baggy gray suit asked if I was waiting for someone. I was too clueless to know what he was really asking. Luckily the friend showed up and rescued me.

  “What a jerk,” Connie said. “Nowadays, you could sue for that.”

  “Maybe it was the attire. Probably a Melrose Place suit with a teeny skirt.” I let the wardrobe conversation dry up when I remembered who I was talking to. Tonight’s package was wrapped in fluffy white Mongolian lamb that mercifully covered another scene of embroidered marine life. Clearly the dress code at the St. George had loosened up.

  Connie had loosened up, too. Lubricated by two drinks, she gave me her life story in broad strokes—born in Brooklyn, she and Guy were neighborhood sweethearts who married when she was barely eighteen. She was quick to point out it was not a shotgun wedding; although I wouldn’t have cared. She and Guy had two kids, but they came later at regulation intervals. Guy was making good money in his father’s landscaping business and didn’t see the need for more than two years of accounting classes at Kingsborough Community College, so he dropped out. Then he started his own business.

  “Interlocking tumbled blocks,” she said. “It’s the way of the future.”

  As a gardener I had a love-hate relationship with them. Lately it had been swinging to love. Most were obvious and plastic, kind of like fake boobs. And they came preweathered (the stones, not the boobs), like prewashed jeans. But recently manufacturers had improved the products, so they looked almost as good as the natural stone they replaced in gardens, driveways, and walls. Was I going over to the dark side?

  Connie wriggled out of her jacket, revealing a tight white blouse with an oyster-shell design on each melon-sized breast. I did my best not to stare. She waved at the young waiter, this time ordering a full bottle. He was putty in her hands—clearly the man was a seafood fan. I nursed my first drink but made short work of the nuts. She signaled for another bowl, and in an instant they appeared.

  Underneath the fish garb Connie Anzalone was an attractive woman in her early thirties with the figure of a Xena: Warrior Princess doll. Her wide blue eyes and pouty mouth all but guaranteed that wiggling her fingers was all she’d have to do to get whatever she wanted. It was fascinating to watch. Don’t get me wrong, I like my looks, but really beautiful women were practically a different species. I think it was the casual power they wielded. And did they wake up that way every morning? Or did it, as a friend used to say, “take a village”? It took me twenty minutes just to dry my hair, and even then one side always looked better than the other, so I usually hid it all under a hat. The bottle arrived and was opened and poured in overtheatrical fashion, no doubt to impress Connie.

  “Guy doesn’t like me to drink so much at home, but I’m not home now, am I?”

  No, she wasn’t. Home for the Anzalones was Coney Island in Brooklyn. The nice part, she’d said, although I’d hardly know which area that was. I was born in Brooklyn, so I’d been to Coney Island. It was more than a Brooklyn landmark. It was a state of mind. When I was a kid I remembered a long stretch of beach from the aquarium to a dive arcade called Eddie’s Fascination that had that seedy beach languor I’d since seen in resort towns from Bar Harbor to Miami and farther south in the Caribbean. The same sarongs, beach towels, and sunglass holders covered with flowers or imprinted with the town’s name and all made in China. On every corner there were Italian restaurants, where old men sat outside on folding chairs doing who knew what. Twenty years later, it probably still looked the same.

  Connie’s husband, the Tumbled Stone King, made his fortune in landscaping, though he’d branched out into demolition and construction. She said it in a way that didn’t lend itself to further elaboration and suggested the rumor about his involvement in illegal activities might be true. We returned to the safer subject of the flower show.

  Her face lost all of its hardness and she lit up when she talked about gardening.

  “It was the only work Guy would let me do—and even then he sent some men to help me plant things or move materials.”

  On my second drink and feeling comfortable, I pointed to her nails. “Gardening can’t be easy with those.”

  “It’s not! But Guy likes them, and he’s, you know, king of the castle. I’m constantly taking them off and putting them on.” That couldn’t be healthy for the nail bed, but perhaps it was good for the marriage b
ed—and given the choice, most people would choose the latter.

  “I think I’m helping the nail salon owner bring over her entire village. There used to be a real diamond on this one.” She showed me the perfectly sculpted, shell-colored nail on her left ring finger, inches from a rock as big as a muscari bulb. “Then I lost it in the garden. I accidentally buried it when I was planting a row of allium last fall. When the shoots come up, I’ll see if there’s a bare spot and poke around. Maybe if I fertilize it’ll grow into a tennis bracelet.”

  Connie had read an article about the Big Apple Flower Show and asked Guy if it would be all right if she tried to exhibit. She’d been fantasizing about the black-tie gala reception ever since she’d sent in the application and the way she talked about it, it may have been the only reason she wanted to participate.

  “You could have knocked me over with a feather when Guy said yes. I did trick him, though. I kept talking about redecorating the master bathroom, so he figured it was cheaper to let me do this. Wasn’t that clever? Now I’m finally here.”

  Wherever here was. She was Cinderella at last invited to the ball. I wasn’t likely to make the society pages either, but I’d gone to black-tie galas—museum openings and screenings when I worked in television—and they were generally no big deal.

  “You know, those parties are more boring than they look. And it’s not that hard to get invited. All you have to do is send a check to the organizations running them.”

  “I didn’t realize.” She poured another drink with such a practiced hand, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d stood up and done a bunny dip.

  “I’m usually good at making friends,” she said, “but people have been so cold. First that man yesterday. Of course I didn’t tell Guy about that. He’d have hit the ceiling, then hit the man. Then I overheard this nasty old broad—the one who smells like an ashtray but looks like she’s giving makeovers at Saks—talking behind my back. I know my entry isn’t the most sophisticated, but there must have been some reason the horticultural society accepted my application.”