Death Will Help You Leave Him (25 page)

“You’d think so. And she didn’t know any of his or Netta’s family. Or Luz.”

“As far as we know.”

“Did you get her number?”

“I did.”

“So call her and ask.”

“Why don’t you call her? You’re the one that likes to play detective.”

“Why did you take her number if you aren’t going to call her? Wait a minute, let me guess. You didn’t ask for her number, she gave it to you.”

“We-e-e-ell—” Sometimes Barbara is too quick. “Since you’re so smart, you call her. Here, I’ll give you the number.” I had stuck Marla’s scrap of paper in my pocket, and I hadn’t changed my pants since then. I thrust it at her.

“Wait, let me put it in my phone, so I can give the paper back to you.” She scrabbled in her bag. “You
could
make a program call, you know. Damn, the pesky thing is playing hide and seek with me.” She stuck two pens behind her ear and a small notepad in her mouth. That left only a couple dozen items to rummage through. “How am I supposed to explain about having her number? I’m not an alcoholic.”

“She probably thinks you are,” I said. “Yeah, yeah, you won’t lie about that. Be creative. You’ll think of something.”

“Found it! Huh, I thought I had it on. I usually put it on vibrate when I’m in a meeting.”

She pressed a button. The phone lit up, flashed, and sang like a slot machine in a miniature Vegas. As soon as that subsided, it began to emit an insistent high-pitched peep.

“Somebody left a voice mail. I have to get myself another phone. This one has an annoying habit of nagging when it has a message waiting.”

She punched in the code and pressed the phone to her ear.

“From Luz. Hold on, let me listen to the message, I might have to call her back.”

“Take your time.” I lounged against a flashy Lamborghini parked tight against the curb. The owner must be crazy to leave it on the street. Or made of money. Or a drunk.

Barbara listened. One hand pressed the phone against her ear. The other made impatient circles in the air, fingers waggling. Long message.

“What’s she saying? If you can tell me.”

Since Barbara was Luz’s sponsor, the message might be none of my business. On the other hand, anonymity didn’t always trump Barbara’s incurable love of talking.

She finally clapped the phone shut and dropped it back in her bag.

“Program call?”

“Not really. Well, sort of. Guess what— Carola called her.”

“But they didn’t know each other. Carola didn’t know who Luz was.”

“I told her,” Barbara confessed.

“When?” As I said it, I knew. “At her place. While I was in the can.”

“I couldn’t stand her talking about ‘the Puerto Rican woman.’ I thought if they could only talk to one another, they’d find they had a lot in common. I was working on Luz, trying to get her to reach out. I figured here were two people who actually mourned Frankie— they could help each other. Carola had the same idea.”

“What did she want? To share her feelings?” I didn’t have ninety days free of sarcasm. That might be the last frontier for me. “She didn’t strike me as the warm fuzzy type.”

“Of course she didn’t put it that way. She said they both loved Frankie, maybe they could help each other through. It’s not like either of them made him cheat on the other— they didn’t know.”

“Yeah, he did that all by himself.”

“Carola invited her out to Brooklyn. She said why doesn’t Luz come and have a drink or some coffee, at least meet the baby. He looks a lot like Frankie, and he’s much nicer.”

“Luz said Carola said that?”

“I say that,” Barbara said. “She wanted to know if I thought she should go. I’ll have to call her back, tell her it’s her decision.”

As we talked, we started walking again. The wind was picking up, the temperature dropping. I zipped up my denim jacket as we reached the bus stop.

Barbara stepped out into the street and craned her neck to the east.

“I can’t see the bus. We’ll wait twenty minutes and then four of them will come along. Are you coming with me?”

“No, I’ll keep you company till the bus comes and then go home.” I had stuff to do around the house. Drinking, I’d never done a lick of cleaning or organizing. Maybe I’d traded alcoholism for OCD. “Why don’t you call Luz back now?”

Barbara fished the phone out again. She punched a few buttons and listened, not as long as before.

“Luz, it’s Barbara. I got your message. Sounds like Carola was trying to make amends. Up to you what you do about it. If you’re not sure, you don’t have to decide today.” To me, she added, “I got her voice mail— she must have turned her phone off.”

“When did she leave the message?”

“I didn’t look. A while ago, I’ve had the phone off for a couple of hours. Want me to check?”

“No, just curious.”

Fifteen minutes later, having seen Barbara onto her bus, I headed for home. I’d better stop in at the corner bodega
.
I needed cigarettes, orange juice, and maybe some V8 too. I was working my way up to fruits and vegetables.

As I crossed the final street, my cell phone rang.

“Yeah.”

A faint, strained whisper reached my ears. I couldn’t make it out.

“Say again. Who is this?”

“Yoda,” I thought the person said. Yoda? Someone who’d seen
Star Wars
too many times?

“You’ve got the wrong number.” My thumb hovered over the hang-up button.

The strained voice was urgent.

“No! No!
Ayuda
!”

“Who is this?”

“
Ayùdame
!” Then, “Bruce— help— help me.”

“Luz?” A pang of alarm shot through my gut. “Where are you?”

“Brooklyn,” she whispered.

“Are you hurt? What happened? Where in Brooklyn? Tell me where you are.” Brooklyn is huge. It’s supposed to be the fourth biggest city in America, except that it’s not a city.

The phone went dead. Damn! “Can you hear me?” has become a mantra for our times.

She’d called me for help. That touched me. Barbara for moral dilemmas, Bruce for action. Barbara doesn’t approve of damsels in distress, but she always says it’s okay to ask for help. Thank God Luz had taken that in. Now all I had to do was find her.

As far as I knew, the only folks she knew in Brooklyn were Frankie’s relatives and friends. She could have gone to visit the grave. Twisted her ankle or even broken it falling in a hole or tripping over a monument. But she had sounded scared. Had she gone to see Massimo or, more likely, Stella in the bakery? We’d told her where it was. I had trouble imagining anyone being scared in that bakery. The sugary, yeasty smells enveloped you like a kid’s blankie. No, she must have gone to Carola’s. Carola had invited her. She’d sounded friendly. When Luz couldn’t reach Barbara, she’d remembered on her own that it was better to make your own decisions. So she’d gone.

I wheeled and started trotting back toward Lex. The subway would be a helluva lot faster than a cab. I hoped I’d be in time. In time for what, I didn’t want to think about. Damn! I knew Carola’s I-don’t-mind-the-other-girlfriend act was bullshit. She must have hated Luz. Here she is saddled with this baby. And there’s the guy she’s loved since they were kids giving her only a third of his attention. Maybe less. Maybe she goes uptown to confront Luz.

Luz isn’t home, but Frankie’s there. He has his own key to Luz’s place. Of course he lets her in. He wants to know what the hell she’s doing there. They fight. She loses it and stabs him with a kitchen knife. Then she scrams. Takes the subway back to Brooklyn. Maybe she washes the knife and puts it back. Maybe she throws it on the tracks on the way home. Only rats go down onto those tracks voluntarily. Sure, guys who work on the tunnels. Change the lights. Fix the tracks. But nobody cleans New York subway tunnels. If they saw a bloody knife, they’d let it lie.

The police won’t think to question her, I thought. They don’t even know she exists. Besides, the murder’s in East Harlem. She’s so far out of her briar patch she’s home free the second she steps on the train back to Brooklyn. It has nothing to do with her. Probably she thought somehow she’d feel relieved to get Frankie out of her hair. But instead, she feels worse. I could imagine what Barbara would call “a whole range of feelings.” She loved the guy. She misses him. Maybe she didn’t expect losing him to be so agonizing, since he’s left her before. But before, she didn’t murder him. So she’s mourning. And on top of that, she discovers she’s still angry. More than angry.

She’s probably furious at Netta as well as Luz. But she knows Netta, she knows her family. She knows Netta has brothers to look out for her. Besides, it’s all too close to home. She can’t be a hundred percent sure nobody will tell the cops about her. They might even seek her out simply as an old friend of Frankie’s, a cousin who might be able to tell them more about him. That’s what we did. If Silvia told us, she could have told the cops. She’s mad at Netta, but she won’t commit a Brooklyn murder. It’s a whole lot safer to go after Luz.

I’d made it halfway down the subway stairs when the phone rang again. I snatched it out of my pocket and flipped it open.

“Luz! Where are you?”

“What are you talking about?” The irritable voice was Laura’s. Good thing I’d never said a world to her about Luz. “I can’t hear you. Are you in the subway?”

“Yes, I’m about to take the train. What’s up?” I didn’t need Laura at all right now.

“I need you. Bruce, I can’t go on. Mac keeps leaving, I keep getting hurt, it’s all too hard. I can’t do it any more.” I’d been wrong. Not irritable. Hopeless. Laura depressed and desperate, same as usual. I felt impatient first, then guilty, then irritated myself.

“Laura, I don’t need this now. It’s just the depression. It always passes. You know that.”

“I can’t,” she wailed. “I can’t do it alone. How can you be so mean to me? You’re the only person who can always talk me down. Come down here, Bruce. I really, really need you.”

“I can’t, Laura.” I tried to keep the exasperation from my voice.

“But I might cut myself. Or worse. I have plenty of pills. I’ve been stockpiling.”

“Call 911,” I said. “Or grab a cab and go to the ER. They’ll take care of you.” In spite of myself, I added, “Or call Mac.”

“He doesn’t understand,” she said. “You’re the only one who does. I’m scared what I might do if you don’t come down and be with me.”

We’d been through this a thousand times. Laura needed limit setting, not enabling. I began to get what that meant. She might go down the drain, but I didn’t have to go down with her. I had a choice. We weren’t even married any more. It wasn’t about that, anyway. I could feel the tidal pull of her overwhelming need. I couldn’t let her suck me in.

“No!” They said No was a complete sentence. Right now, it felt like a better sentence than the hard labor I’d already served: rescuing Laura over and over again. “Laura, I can’t come. I’m busy. I have my own life to live, and you’ve got to pull yourself together and live yours. You’re beautiful, you’re talented, you deserve a lot better than me. It’s over. No more emotional blackmail.”

“It’s over,” she repeated. The two words thudded, final as coffin nails. Oh, shit, what if this time she really meant it? But she never did. She’d do anything to keep me on the merry-go-round. “There’s someone else. Oh, Brucie, how can you do this to me? I love you so much. I’ve always loved you, you know that.”

At that, I got mad. It was easier than feeling guilty.

“So much you hooked up with that Neanderthal turd Mac. You never loved me, Laura. Okay, maybe in your way. But you needed someone to lean on, and sometimes I’ve thought that any scratching post would do. I’m sorry. I hope some day you figure out how to be happy, joyous, and free.” The AA words tumbled out as if from a stranger’s lips. The truth was, Laura didn’t want the person I had a chance of becoming now. Only the person I had been. “I’m the one that can’t do it any more. I’m sorry.”

I shouted the last words into the phone, barely able to hear myself as the train rumbled into the station. I didn’t have the heart to hang up on her. But I knew the signal would cut out the moment the train doors closed. I’d expected the connection to break a lot sooner. Maybe cell phones, like guys addicted to beautiful bad girls, had trouble letting go.

At least I tried. If I didn’t always embrace the new behavior, I knew the right direction to go. That’s what I liked about Luz. She tried too. That didn’t mean she didn’t ever fall back into the arms of past illusions. In fact, she was a lot like me. And I could help, if only this train would get its electrical ass in gear and get me there. Jimmy would say I’m powerless over the subway.
God give me patience— NOW!
That was a joke, not a real prayer. I said it under my breath anyway. And then a prayer for Luz and one for Laura. Just in case Someone was listening.

When Barbara let herself into the apartment, Jimmy was hunched over the computer. The only indication that he’d moved in the two hours she’d been gone was a row of empty soda cans lined up on the floor in a soldierly fashion and stripped stems bristling with twigs sticking up out of a bowl that had been filled with grapes when she left. The lilting felicities of uilleann pipes and penny whistle, Celtic harp and bodhran filled the room.

“Chieftains? How was your meeting?”

“Fine, my peach.” Jimmy used the remote to lower the sound without taking one hand off the keyboard or the other off the mouse. For Jimmy, this hardly counted as multitasking. “How was yours?”

Barbara scooped up an armful of soda cans and came around behind him to kiss the top of his head. She unbent her elbow, letting the cans fall with a pleasant clinking, harmonious enough with the Irish music, into a metal wastebasket a foot from Jimmy’s chair.

“Wastebasket— Jimmy. Jimmy— wastebasket.” She waved her hand, performing introductions. “Oh, what’s the use? It was a good meeting.”

“What use indeed, my pet?” Jimmy said, his eyes twinkling. “Acceptance is the answer. Did anything interesting happen?”

“Not at the meeting. But I talked to Bruce afterward, and I want you to make a phone call. Did you ever reach Mars, to get Marla’s number?”