CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (28 page)

F
ORTY
-N
INE

T
he garden at the Home was brighter because the trees were bare, but the light was colorless, the air dank. I felt as though I were walking through a black-and-white photograph.

The guard at the desk looked at me and I looked at him and he didn’t stop me. I went to the left, to the piano room.

The curtains were open, the windows shut on the view of the empty porch and bleak garden beyond. There was no sound in the room, no movement. I turned to leave.

“Since neither of us is dead yet, you might as well sit down,” said a sharp, familiar voice.

“Ida?” I turned. She was seated on a sofa at the end of the room. I had missed her in the featureless light.

“You look terrible,” she said.

I crossed the room, took a chair next to her.

“You should have seen me last week.”

“They wouldn’t let me see you last week. Dr. Madsen said hospitals aren’t healthy places for old people. He should have told that to Dr. Reynolds. Are you really married to that Chinese girl?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, you should be.”

“Tell her.”

“You tell her. I’m not in the matchmaking business. Why are you here? They arrested that delinquent, the one with the foolish name, and they said the other one killed Dr. Reynolds. Your investigation must be over.”

“It is. I came back to see you.”

“Why?”

I did palms-up. “Why not?”

She waved her hand in disgust. “Don’t start with the Borscht Belt. On you it doesn’t look good. Did you know the Boss Lady ran out on us?”

“Mrs. Wyckoff?” I took out a cigarette.

“Of course Mrs. Wyckoff. She took the money and ran. Don’t you drop ashes on my carpet.”

I pulled the cellophane from the pack, used it as an ashtray. “Your carpet?”

“It’s the only thing I brought from home. It was a wedding present. Before this they didn’t have anything under the piano. Can you imagine? It sounded terrible.” She glared at the piano, as though it had sounded terrible on purpose. “I think they’re closing this place.” She didn’t look at me. “Did you know?”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “Why?”

“Why? Because the Boss Lady—Wyckoff, Wyckoff, Wyckoff, her stupid name is!—was stealing and so was everybody else. Three murders, plus what happened to that truck driver. And what happened to you didn’t help.” Now she glared at me. “Mr. Domenico’s daughter came yesterday and took him home. One of the nurses today just happened to mention how lovely it was where she used to work in New Jersey, where they have trees and grass. I told her we have that here.”

She stared through the window at the gray garden.

I tapped the ash from my cigarette. “There are beautiful places in New Jersey.”

“Oh, don’t be reasonable with me! If I want reasonable I’ll talk to a social worker. I’m an old woman and I want to be upset.”

“Okay,” I said.

We sat together, watched a squirrel hop along the porch railing. He looked anxious and harried. He had a lot to do in a short time.

“They don’t have a piano. At the beautiful place in New Jersey. I asked the nurse.”

I didn’t answer, didn’t know what to say.

Ida shot me a sharp look. “It doesn’t matter, you know. I can hardly play anymore anyway.” She surveyed me. “You haven’t played since you got beaten up, have you?”

“I can’t. I have trouble just opening a can of beer.”

“Do you miss it?”

“The beer?”

She snorted. “I can see why Anna Mae Wong won’t marry you.”

“Lydia Chin,” I said. “I can too.”

Ida looked back to the window. The squirrel was gone. Empty branches shook in the wind.

“What will happen to the cats?” she asked the windowpane.

“The cats?”

“It was cold this morning. I couldn’t go feed them. It will get colder, and then they’ll move us to New Jersey, and then nobody will be here …” Ida’s voice caught. “Damn!” she whispered angrily. “What will happen to the cats?” A tear moved tentatively down her parchment-colored cheek.

“I’ll take care of them,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous! You’ll come feed them, every day, all the way here? You will not.”

“No. But I’ll think of something. I’ll take care of them.”

For four days I came out to the Bronx Home early in the morning, sat on the porch next to a bowl of 9-Lives. The first day only the tiger kitten would come and eat, jerking back at every leaf scraping across the tile. The black-and-white kitten and the mother cat
watched from between the stone balusters, the cat peering silently while the kitten mewed, approached, retreated. The second day both kittens came. The third day I put the bowl into a shallow cardboard box, sat still while the kittens jumped in, ate, jumped out. They chased each other around the porch; the tiger kitten, taking a shortcut in the game, ran across my lap.

On the fourth day, while the kittens were eating, I closed the top on the cardboard box. The mother cat, who had never come near me, watched from the balusters.

“You can come too,” I said. “You could stay with me.”

She twitched her tail. Small mews arose from the box I was carrying. I turned back at the top of the stairs. She was gone.

I took the kittens to the vet, got them baths and shots. I kept them for three days at home, until they seemed used to being held and they knew what to do in a litter box. Then, late in the afternoon, I put them back in their cardboard box and took them back to the Bronx.

The uneven slate sidewalks near the Yonkers line were the same color as the sky. I walked up the short walk to Sheila Downey’s porch carrying a shopping bag, cradling a kitten inside my jacket.

Sheila answered the bell holding Peg. Sheila smiled when she saw me. Peg looked serious. Otherwise they were identical—glossy curls, round pink cheeks, deep brown eyes.

“It’s so good to see you,” Sheila told me.

I kissed her cheek. “You look great, Sheila.”

“And you look—” She broke off when she heard a peep from the inside of my jacket. “Mother Mary, what have you got?”

I unhooked the kitten’s claws from my shirt, took her out for them to see. “She needs a home.”

“Oh,” Sheila said. “Oh, my.”

“I brought cat food. And kitty litter.” I lifted the shopping bag.

Peg had been staring at the kitten, watching her mew. A smile burst onto her face. “Beew!” She reached for the kitten.

“No.” Sheila pointed to me. “That’s Bill. This is a baby cat. C-A-T, remember?”

Peg stared at Sheila, waited for her to stop talking nonsense. “Beew,” she said firmly again, pointing a tiny finger at the black-and-white kitten.

“Well,” said Sheila, “I guess we’ll call her Bill. Big Bill and Little Bill. You’d better come in, you Bills, before we all freeze. Will you stay? I’ll make some tea.”

“Yes, thanks, but not for long. I have another delivery to make.”

Sheila lit the stove under the kettle while the kitten explored the kitchen and Peg crawled, giggling, after her.

“Bobby was here.” Sheila put a plate of shortbread on the table. “He told me about that gang member. He told me what happened.”

The kettle started to sing. Sheila poured boiling water into the pot. The kitten scrabbled up the leg of a wooden chair, peered at Peg from over the edge of the seat. Peg clapped her hands and laughed.

Sheila smiled. “They’ll be great friends.” Then her smile faded. “Bill? The things Bobby told me—they don’t explain it all, do they? They don’t explain the way Mike was acting. The questions he asked. Do they?”

“No.” I watched while she poured milk into the china cups, and then the strong, dark tea. “Bobby doesn’t know the whole story.”

Sheila paused. “Do you mean the police are hiding something?”

“No. I am.”

I told Sheila the truth, watched her face.

Sheila sipped her tea, didn’t speak for some time while Peg and the kitten chased each other around our feet.

When she finally spoke her voice was soft. “Mike was trying to protect Bobby. He wasn’t … he wasn’t doing anything wrong.” She smiled softly. “Do you know, I never even let myself think that, until just now. When I knew for sure it wasn’t true.”

“That’s why I wanted to tell you. So you’d know that.”

She turned away. “Thank you.”

I drank my tea, ate a buttery shortbread. The kitten galloped over my shoe.

“I don’t know if I’m doing right,” I said to Sheila. “Not to tell Bobby about Howe. I’m not sure what right I have to do that.”

“The same right Mike had.” She put her hand over mine, pressed gently.

I finished my tea. Sheila lifted Peg, and they showed me to the door.

“You know,” I said, standing in the doorway, “Bobby likes cats.”

Sheila smiled. “I already thought of that.”

Going across the Bronx traffic was slow, but the car was warm and the music was Brahms and I was okay.

I parked across the street from the tired brick building, took the other shopping bag and the tiger kitten and went inside. Carter’s voice croaked through the intercom and I croaked back. He buzzed me in. The elevator was about as shaky as I was, but we got there.

“Man,” said Carter, unhooking the door chain, “what you doing here?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “It was his.” I took the tiger kitten from the warmth of my coat.

“Yo! Yo, what the hell is that?”

“It’s a cat.”

“Oh, no shit! What you bring it here for?”

“For Vanessa.”

“What you talking about, for Vanessa?”

“He needs a home. She needs a kitten.”

“Who say?”

“Ask her.”

“I ask her, she say yes. Then I got to feed it and worry about it.”

“I can solve that problem too, if you let me in.”

“Martin?” The tiny bent form of Carter’s grandmother appeared at his elbow. “Martin! Why on earth is you keeping your friend standing out there, after all he done for you?” She bustled past him, took me by the arm, led me inside. The room was shabby but trim, full of mismatched furniture and the spicy scent of baking. The Lord’s Prayer, cross-stitched, hung on one wall, a photograph of Martin Luther King on another. “You just come on in and—oh, my! My, now look at this!”

“I brought him for Vanessa,” I said. “I promised a friend of mine I’d find a home for him. But Martin doesn’t want him.”

Rashid charged into the room, flat-footed and swivel-hipped, laughing at his own unsteadiness. Vanessa, running after him, stopped in the doorway when she saw me. She put her thumb in her
mouth, pressed her lanky body into the jamb.

“Martin?” she said. “Who’s him?”

“This my friend Bill, Nessie. He give us a ride home from school, remember?”

The thumb came out of Vanessa’s mouth and she brightened. “Yeah. You got the car play ballerina music. It nice!” She looked more closely. “What that there?”

“It’s a kitten,” I said. “Want to play with him?”

She nodded, came near me.

“Here.” I took a piece of string with a knotted end from my pocket. “He likes to chase things.” I put the kitten down, showed Vanessa how to drag the string along the floor for him to pounce on.

“You better take that out of here when you go,” Carter said to me in an undertone. He picked up Rashid, who was clinging to his leg.

“Why?”

“I tell you why. Cause she gonna start to care what happen to it, and then it gonna run away or some dog gonna snap it in two. Then what I’m gonna tell her?”

I had no answer, but I didn’t have to make one.

“Martin, that ain’t but foolishness,” his grandmother scolded. “You ain’t never gonna give her a chance to love nothing, case someday she lose it? What you thinking of? Mr. Smith, seem to me we got room in here for a thing that size. Plus, he look like a mouser to me.”

“I think he will be. And please call me Bill.”

“And who gonna pay to feed it? Who gonna take it to the vet?” Carter said.

“You’re going to have to take it yourself, but feeding it won’t be the problem you think.”

“Why not?”

“Bill,” Enna Carter said, “you plan on trying to talk sense into this boy, you best sit yourself down. I get you some coffee and some sweet-potato pie. Nessie, go find Rashid’s bottle.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. Vanessa, with a look at the tiger kitten, flew off and flew back, thrust a bottle at Carter. He gestured me to the flowered couch, sat with me. Rashid reached for the bottle. Carter helped him hold it.

“Look,” he said. “You spring me from the joint. I owe you. Snake done what he done, tell you it for me, I owe you. But it ain’t
easy, keep together what I got here. And they tell me the Home be closing soon. Thing that size don’t eat much, but whatever it eat, I can’t afford to buy it.”

“If you made a better living you’d keep it?”

“Sure, maybe. But food stamps don’t buy no cat food.”

“Well.” I made a thoughtful face. “I promised Ida Goldstein I’d take care of the kittens. I guess I don’t have much choice.” I pulled a piece of paper from my shirt pocket. “Call this guy. Tell him I sent you.”

Carter, feeding Rashid, strained to see the paper. “What guy?”

“It’s a union shop, but he can get you in the union. Masons and bricklayers. He’s got a lot of renovation work right now. City contracts, part of this Bronx Renaissance thing. He needs guys.”

“What trash you talking, union gig? Ex-con, don’t know no godfather, now how I’m gonna get in some union?”

“Call this guy.” I put the paper on the battered, polished coffee table.

“Man,” Carter said, “I don’t get it. I ain’t never gonna be nobody. You ain’t got nothing but pain since you met me. Why you coming like this?”

“Because when Vanessa’s President of the United States, I want her to remember who gave her her first kitten.”

I stayed and had nutmeg-scented pie and strong coffee. I held Rashid, now asleep, while Carter ate his pie, and I showed Vanessa how to pick the kitten up. Then, as Vanessa yawned and the kitten fell asleep in her lap, I stood to leave.

“Thank you for your present,” Enna Carter said. “And for all you done for Martin.”

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Carter. I hope the kitten doesn’t give you too much trouble.”