Slugfest Page 6

  I wondered silently if her husband or his company had anything to do with it.

  “Every garden doesn’t have to look like Dr. Jekyll’s, does it?”

  My Robert Louis Stevenson was rusty but I was fairly sure neither of his most famous creations, the good Doctor Jekyll nor his evil alter ego, had had gardens.

  “The English lady,” Connie said.

  The girl had done her homework, even if she did mangle the name. Should I correct her or let it go? Always a toss-up. “I think it’s pronounced Gee-kill, Gertrude Jekyll,” I said, gently, “just in case it comes up in conversation.”

  “See, you know so much. You’re just the type of person I hoped I’d meet here.”

  Her eyes got watery, but instead of letting the tears spill over, she threw her head back and drained her glass. I was dazzled by her speedy recovery—and her apparently wooden leg.

  I repeated what I’d heard—that there had been other mishaps at the show. She perked up and even laughed about a quartet of plaster gnomes that had given up their lives. We decided their ashes should be spread at the Taj Mahal or Eiffel Tower, where they’d had their pictures taken.

  A commotion in the lobby caught our attention as a burly guy brushed aside the doorman, spun through the revolving door into the bar, and headed our way. Something told me she had called the Tumbled Stone King about today’s mishap.

  “Oh.” With one finger she slid the champagne bottle a tiny bit closer to me, to suggest it was all mine.

  “Did I not tell you? What did I tell you?” he said. Connie shrank a bit as the man lumbered toward us. Towering over our booth, his hands on his bulky hips, he took a deep breath, then let it out in a blast of air that carried traces of Scotch and cigar smoke. He made a smoothing motion with his thick paws. “I don’t mean to yell at you.” He wiped his forehead with the heels of both hands. Then he motioned Connie out of the booth. “C’mon. We’re going home.”

  She licked her lips, producing a pout I imagined she used whenever she wanted something. I felt like I should be taking notes.

  “I just don’t want you to get your feelings hurt, baby.”

  “For goodness sakes, Guy, all my things are upstairs. I overreacted. It was just a prank. Paula says there’ve been other incidents. It wasn’t just me. They’re calling it the Javits Curse. It has nothing to do with you.”

  I felt uncomfortable and got up to leave.

  “Sit.” He pointed, as if I were a dog he was training. I sat. What was next, rolling over?

  “Look, I’m sorry. Please, don’t go. I’m Connie’s husband.”

  As if I couldn’t tell.

  Guy Anzalone motioned for the waiter, ordered a Famous Grouse, and squeezed into the booth. I was sandwiched in between a woman dressed like Ariel and a Damon Runyon character from Guys and Dolls. I polished off my drink, and Connie quickly topped me off. I was going to need a lot more nuts.

  Twenty

  It was simple. Anything that made Connie unhappy made Guy unhappy. Unhappiness was not a condition he handled well. All this was made clear over more drinks and a feisty exchange that was both comical and a little unsettling. Unlike Nikki, I didn’t think Anzalone was a criminal just because he was rough around the edges, but there was something in his manner that screamed short fuse. And in Connie’s, too.

  “My girl needs looking after.” He patted her hand. “She’s a tough cupcake in her own milieu, but she’s in a different world here. At the show, I mean. I don’t want anyone to take advantage of her … naïveté.”

  “What’s gonna happen to me at a flower show—I’m gonna get attacked by a man-eating plant?”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen. I’ve made sure of that. I sent Fat Frank and Cookie to look out for you.”

  “Don’t you dare. I’ll be mortified.”

  He put his fingers to his lips the way you’d silence a child. “It’s already done. See, you didn’t even know they were there. And this girl, this woman, is gonna help, too. What’s your name again, hon?”

  We’d already told him twice. Clearly I wasn’t making much of an impression. Insult aside, did I want to be on a tag team with two guys named Fat Frank and Cookie? Were they the men I’d seen? But neither of them was fat. Would I be required to adopt a nickname, like “the Chin” or “Lips”? I felt the urge to get up again but suppressed it, since Guy weighed around 230 pounds, roughly double my size. Trying to muscle past him would be ridiculous.

  I shook my head—dumb move since it magnified the buzz I was getting from the combination of champagne and no food except the nuts.

  “I’m sure I can’t improve on anything Fat Frank and Cookie can do.” I struggled to keep a straight face when I said their names.

  “My boys will make sure she’s safe, but I want you to keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s not lonely. That, you know, she’s included in all the reindeer games.” Connie protested, but Guy made it sound like a perfectly reasonable request. A big sister program.

  Though I could have used their advice, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and the dead relatives were strangely silent on this issue. Perhaps I was channeling my inner cugine, or my inner Brooklyn girl, but I found myself agreeing. The show lasted just a few days and I didn’t know many people there myself. Why not spend time with her? Everyone I knew in Springfield, apart from Babe and Caroline Sturgis, were so beige. It could be fun.

  “I like Connie. You don’t need to recruit friends for her,” I said, not using the more obvious word—pimp.

  “Good, well, that’s settled,” she said. “You’ll help me decide what to wear to the reception. We can go shopping.”

  “No money to go shopping,” I said. “Besides, I have to finish setting up. And don’t you have last-minute primping to do?”

  “Go shopping. Have a good time.” He whipped out a roll of bills and left a stack on the table.

  Connie said nothing, confident there’d be no serious objection to her shopping excursion, from either of us. “I have to go tinkle. Guy, make her say yes.”

  She playfully knocked Guy’s elbow off the table on her way to the ladies’ room, and his hand accidentally brushed my knee. At least, I hoped it was an accident, but it lingered longer than it needed to and unless I imagined it, Guy’s pinkie finger trailed a good three inches up my thigh before he threw a pretend punch in Connie’s direction and said, “Yeah, sure.”

  When Connie was safely out of earshot, he gave me his full attention. “So tell me what it is you’re selling, hon.”

  My first sale. Maybe that old house detective knew something I didn’t. I convinced myself playing kneesies with Guy Anzalone was an offer I couldn’t refuse and was a small price to pay for the sizable purchase I’d pressure him to make. I’d take one for the team. Primo would sell a piece, Babe would be pleased, and I’d earn a commission. What could happen in a public place while his wife was in the ladies’ room?

  To keep the conversation professional I’d flipped open my laptop as soon as Connie left. Tactical error. Guy took that as an excuse to squeeze closer and reacquaint his hand with my knee. His thigh pressed against mine and it was surprisingly warm. I can’t say I was aroused, but it was hard to ignore the heat. I repositioned the computer screen and crossed my legs to avoid contact.

  By the time Connie returned, Guy’s head was inclined a little too close to mine and he had to pretend to be interested in a large wind device Primo had constructed out of two rusted lawn mowers. Served him right for hitting on a woman while his wife was twenty feet away and getting closer.

  She peered over my other shoulder. “Ooohh, I like that one.”

  How much could I milk this? I clicked on another image. “Of course, if you have the space, you could go with this one, constructed from vintage tractor parts. It’s much more impressive.” And twice the cost. I shamelessly played to his vanity and her eagerness to impress. Say yes, please, I thought. I’ll even go shopping with you if you buy this one.

  Guy looked like a man who’d been caug
ht with his hand in the cookie jar. Connie and I were about to deliver a five-thousand-dollar slap on that hand. Her lower lip started to quiver. His eyes softened. The checkbook was produced. Good grief. I didn’t want to think about what I could have sold them if I’d actually let him cop a feel. I agreed to meet her the next morning for a fashion consultation and left the two lovebirds canoodling—or maybe it was arguing—in the hotel bar.

  Twenty-one

  As I recalled, that’s what relationships were like—blowups, followed by makeups—though I imagined few were as animated or as expensive as the Anzalones’.

  My last relationship ended when I was accused of being married to my job. Ironic, since I was fired soon after. It never occurred to me to call the man and tell him what happened. Some relationships have an expiration date, like milk, and that one had no longer passed the sniff test.

  I’d been on my own for a while and, apart from the semiannual fix-up orchestrated by Babe or Lucy, I was content running my business, getting used to life in Springfield, and taking the occasional trip into the city to catch up with old friends. Apart from Hank Mossdale there had only been one other man on my radar—Mike O’Malley, a Springfield cop. But subtle signs were putting him into the confidant/brother camp and not the what-does-he-look-like-naked camp, and I was fine with that. In fact, I’d thought that he and Lucy might have some chemistry, but that flirtation was short-lived. He’d gotten her out of a jam and she was suitably grateful but, according to her—and she’s the kind that tells—it never went any further.

  When I got to her place, I picked up the mail and left the poisonous-to-pets info sheet and a brief note under the corner of the doormat of the woman on three. Or four, whatever it was. I would have slipped it under her door but worried she might automatically assume it was a menu and shred it and let her cats pee on it.

  Once in the apartment, I hung on the refrigerator door, willing the remnants of the previous night’s chickpea salad to miraculously turn into kung pao chicken or a slab of lasagna, but it didn’t happen. The hurricane drink mix started to seem like a good idea but it went better with jambalaya than it did on an empty stomach.

  I tiptoed down the stairs. As I passed the neighbor’s apartment, the peephole cover moved, and I gave the woman behind the door a slight wave I knew she wouldn’t return. The pet poison list was still outside. When I reached the ground floor, I held the inside door open with my stockinged foot. As the cat lady had predicted, any number of menus from local restaurants littered the floor. I had my choice of Chinese, Japanese, Italian, the intriguingly named Fusha Fusion, or a Greek diner, from which I could presumably get anything I wanted. This was New York at its best—anything you wanted brought to your door, 24-7. Food was the least of it.

  The diner menus were just beyond my reach, stacked neatly by the outer door. Why did those guys have to be the neat ones? Everyone else had just flung theirs in the doorway and disappeared.

  I stretched as far as I could and grazed the menus with my fingertips, but only succeeded in pushing them farther away. Then I got the bright idea to wedge the other menus between the door and the jamb, near the lock so the bolt wouldn’t engage. Don’t try this at home. The menus fell, the door locked. I was trapped in the drafty vestibule with no shoes, no jacket, no phone, and, more important, no keys. I stood there shivering, trying to decide what to do next.

  One solution was to suck it up and walk to the bar on the corner and beg them to let me use their phone to call a locksmith. My free stay at Lucy’s was going to cost me at least two hundred bucks unless prices had gone up since I’d moved to Connecticut. And she wouldn’t be able to get into her own apartment when she returned. Not a good plan.

  Twenty-two

  The only other person I’d seen in the building was the cat lady. I rang her bell and, as expected, she didn’t answer. Nothing. I rang again. This time I heard the staticky crackle of the intercom, but no one spoke. This was a careful woman—after all, she answered the door with a door bar in her hand.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. It’s me. The woman on five, I mean four. Lucy’s friend. I’ve locked myself out of the building.” I heard nothing for a few minutes, then I looked through the glass panel and saw what looked like a thin periscope or a snake with a curved head. Next, a tanned hand and a slightly crepey wrist. The door opened.

  “I brought my bar,” she said. “Just in case.”

  “Thank you. That was smart.” Paranoid, but smart. The cats, Tommy and Moochie, had followed her down and now trailed us back up the stairs. She unfolded my note and the pet poison flyer. “Did you leave this for me?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “That was very thoughtful,” she said, as though I’d donated a kidney. “Where are you from?”

  I toyed with the idea of telling her I was from the Midwest or the South or the planet Zoran, which could be the only possible explanation for why I’d done something nice for a total stranger. But I decided the truth was the best way to go.

  “Brooklyn.”

  So was she. In her book that made us kindred spirits. She looked at the menus. “I’ve got a tray of baked ziti in the oven. I could open a bottle of wine.” Cooked food. Five minutes away. And it was baked ziti, which I hadn’t eaten since my mother had inexplicably packed up and moved to Florida. There was no way I could really smell the oregano and tomato sauce, but I imagined I did. I said yes.

  Her name was J. C. Kaufman. J. C.’s apartment was a marvel of efficiency. In one modestly sized studio she had a kitchen, a dining area, a living room with a working fireplace, and an office with a drafting table and two computer monitors. A tight spiral staircase led to a sleep loft. When I told her I was a gardener, she insisted on showing me her garden, an eight-by-ten terrace lined with planters and punctuated with whiskey half barrels. Three of them held rhododendrons and two had evergreen shrubs that may have been Pieris.

  “You can’t tell now, but I have Japanese maples and clematis in the spring. Come back inside—it’s still cold out here at night. I just wanted to show it to you.”

  J. C. was an editor. Videos, not books. She got started in the eighties, working on promotional tune-ins for the soaps. We swapped war stories.

  “I’ve seen hundreds of these so-called stars come and go. The young ones—they all think they’re the next Meryl Streep. They’re not. It’s all hair and lip gloss. And Botox. You could crack walnuts on their foreheads. Now, Susan Lucci, she’s a class act. And even more beautiful in person. She does, of course, have a big head. They all do. All famous people.”

  I was regretting my decision to join her for dinner. I didn’t know anything about soap stars or how big people’s heads should be and didn’t want to appear uninterested. She waved off my offer to help, put on a pair of silicone mitts, and took the ziti out of the oven, placing it on the butcher-block cart that defined her kitchen area. The whole apartment filled with the fragrance of the stinking rose, and the top of the ziti was burnt in five or six places where the cheeses had bubbled up. J. C. pulled off the mitts and fetched a bottle of Barolo.

  “I’ll get glasses. You want to help, keep Moochie away from our dinner. I don’t mind a few cat hairs on my food, but it turns some people off.” She walked to a shallow china cabinet near the front door. Just as she suspected, Moochie made his move toward the sizzling baking dish the minute his mistress turned away. I was less worried about pet dander than I was about him burning his paws.

  “Go on, Moochie.” I tried to shoo him away. “Go on.”

  J. C.’s head poked around the corner. Her eyes were wide. She held two glasses and an index finger was pressed against her lips. At first I thought it was her special way of communicating with the cat. She motioned to the front door with her head; then I heard what she’d heard. Footsteps in the hallway, and they could only be heading upstairs to Lucy’s apartment. Then we heard someone rummaging around. Had we left the downstairs door open? J. C. was frozen to the spot. She pointed to the phone on the far end o
f the wooden table, and I took the receiver out of the cradle and tiptoed toward the terrace, ready to dial 911. She viciously shook her head and pointed to the bathroom, where presumably it was less likely I’d be overheard than outside where the sound might drift up to where the intruders were.

  By the time I’d hung up, two sets of footsteps had scrambled down the stairs and out the front door, which shut with a slam. We heard the tinkle of glass as one of the panels must have broken.

  “Damn.” J. C. finally moved and put down the glasses she’d been gripping during the entire incident. She looked like she was tempted to take a swig right from the bottle; instead she poured two large ones. “I’d say the wine’s had time to breathe. Me, too.” Neither of us minded that Moochie had started dinner without us.

  When the cops knocked on J. C.’s door, we were startled, then realized if a glass panel had been broken in the front door, they wouldn’t have needed to be buzzed in. Still, J. C. slid the metal disc that covered the door’s peephole to one side and waited a full minute before putting her eye against the door to see who it was. “Old habit,” she said, removing the bar and unlocking the door.

  Officers Vargas and Wilson spent a few moments getting the story, then they went upstairs to search Lucy’s apartment while we stayed at J. C.’s until they said it was safe.

  “They really did some damage,” Wilson said, leading the way through the door I’d foolishly left open. I didn’t know what to think but followed him, expecting the worst. Nothing looked that different to me. The cops couldn’t understand why I was so relieved. “It doesn’t look that bad,” I said. “Oh, that.”

  Vargas stood inside the hole in the wall Lucy’s contractor boyfriend had started to join the apartments and never finished. One hand was on each side of the wall as if he were holding them up. “Looks like Iron Man crashed outta here.”