Serpents in the Cold (17 page)

“So, what is it?”

“Foley,” she said, “Congressman Foley. It's the reason she had to leave, and, of course, because everyone knew.” She pulled at her napkin, leaving little bits of it on the table.

He had to look away from her, and for a moment stared about the room. Michael Foley and Sheila. Congressman Michael Foley and Sheila. It was hard to imagine. He clenched the cigarette and it broke in his hands. He looked down and saw the tobacco clinging to his moist skin.

“Once Congressman Foley entered the scene, she only had time for him. And not too soon after is when she left the office. And to think, Congressman Foley had a wife at home whom he loved.”

“‘Loved'…is that right?” he asked, mockingly.

“She,”
she said, hissing the word so that Dante knew she meant Sheila, and paused, “was merely a plaything. It would never have been love.” She shook her head. “Never.”

“She wasn't a whore,” he said louder than he wanted to.

“But I wouldn't call her an angel,” quipped Miss Grubb, unwilling to relent even as she sat farther back in her chair, her smile fading.

“The way you're telling it, she was a girl who'd be foolish enough to fuck a guy for flowers. She wasn't a slut and she wasn't stupid. She knew how life worked, knew how to avoid messes like that.” He pushed back as if to leave, knowing that what he'd said didn't ring true to the woman.

Her shoulders stiffened and she shifted in the chair. Her eyes left his and stared over at the crowded bar. “Really, Mr. Cooper, I'm just telling you what I heard. I thought that's what happens in these situations.”

“This isn't a goddamn movie.”

She looked back and a gleam had returned to her eyes; it was as if she hadn't even heard him. “She's in trouble, isn't she? That's why you're here, that's why you want to know so much about her private life.”

“She's dead,” he said, and waited until she looked away, pale and unsure of herself. He twisted on the seat and then reached into his pocket and pulled out some crumpled-up bills. He spread one out and ironed it flat with his hand. Just a dollar. The next bill was a five. All he had left. He pushed the five into the middle of the table, crumpled the dollar bill up again, and shoved it in his pocket. “I'm glad you enjoyed the sandwich. Let me hail you a cab back to the office.”

As he passed through the smoke and the crowd beneath it, he tried to calm himself, but the bad taste in his mouth intensified.

In the foyer, as he helped her put on her coat, she turned and said, “Dante, thank you for lunch. I'd like to do it again sometime. I'm—I'm sorry, sorry for Sheila, for your loss. If I hear anything, anything at all, I'll let you know.”

He saw a fragile, broken expression on her face, and it deepened into self-pity as they stepped outside into the cold of Stuart Street. He hailed a taxi, opened the door for her when it pulled up to the curb. Before he closed it, she leaned across the seat and craned her head toward him, put on a smile that reminded him of his sister Claudia when she tried to show that she was happy when obviously she wasn't. She waited for him to say something, maybe to apologize for getting red moments before, maybe wanting him to ask her out, but he nodded, said, “Good day,” closed the door, and turned his back to her.

_________________________

ON THE SIDEWALK,
a sudden harsh wind pulled at him, stirring the frustration in him and making him feel like he'd just stepped out of the confessional booth with even more sins clawing at his back. Sheila and Congressman Foley—the politician type that Moody had mentioned. He reminded himself not to take it for truth, for Miss Grubb was just a misfit on a soapbox, that's all she was. A bitter crank.

He tried clearing his mind, but everything faded into the emptiness he understood so well, and all he could do was take those familiar well-worn steps back in time and think of Margo waiting for him to score, her lying on their bed and suddenly alert like a cat ready to be fed when he opened the door, and them exchanging looks, the kind only a junkie would understand, and her clapping her hands like a child. “I can always count on my man, the love of my life.”

He tried to pull himself out of the past, watched the wind carry debris through the Theater District. Anger coursed through his veins like broken glass, and he wished that the desperation that followed him wherever he went would subside and break for just a moment. He needed a reprieve, a way to let it go. He moved in against the shelter of the building, lit a cigarette, and the cold air bit at the exposed skin of his face and his hands so that he felt he could barely breathe. Scarletti was the Butcher, had killed Sheila and the other women, but how did Blackie figure in; or was it, like Owen said, just a coincidence? And Renza, the flash-in-the-pan crooner dating Sheila—where did he figure in to her life before she was killed? Dante imagined the photo shop he had worked at, a front for selling dirty fuck pictures to smut magazines, and he saw Bobby behind the camera, framing Sheila's large breasts, her wide-spread legs, her vacant stare. He thought of the picture he'd found at the Somerville apartment, the one inscribed
“My Only Pin-Up, Mario.”
A ripe fucking mess, he thought—and now Sheila linked up with the would-be senator from Massachusetts, Michael Foley, who'd grown up with him and Cal, and who was brother to Blackie Foley. Just a fucking no-good mess.

Sheila's life had been wrapped in all manner of deceits that even he couldn't have guessed at, but did any of it have anything to do with her murder? Her death could truly have been the random act of a psychopath.

He knew he had to do something other than stand out in the cold, thinking about all the men, all the relationships that Sheila had been in. He turned away from the wind, felt an aimless panic pull at him, one that only a visit to Karl could help quiet.

Taxis passed him by, and the urge to wave one down persisted, but he realized he had only a dollar to his name. That wouldn't cover the ride to Cambridge, and if he managed to get there, Karl would only laugh in his face—“I told you you'd be back”—and laugh even harder when Dante asked if he could score and pay him back later.

He walked up to a phone booth, opened the door. Its rusted hinges creaked loudly, and he stepped inside. The wired glass around him was cracked weblike, and the cloying stench of piss and beer overpowered his senses. He felt he should call Cal, let him know how fucked up things were getting. He rifled through his pants pockets, and then the pockets of his coat. There wasn't any change, just the dollar bill he'd crumpled earlier. He picked up the receiver, and the silence of a dead line pressed against his ear. He slammed the receiver against the box and kicked at the bottom panel of glass until it too cracked in a fractured web.

_________________________

Kneeland Street, Chinatown

DANTE HAD KNOWN
Jill years before and had searched her out first, surprised that she was even alive let alone still on the streets. She still used but told him she took it slow, that it wasn't as bad as it had once been, and besides, she'd seen too many friends die. Now she did it to get by, but she knew the difference between that and getting lost. Like a lot of other girls, she'd once worked for Shea Mack, but he'd cut her years before and had no use for her now—he liked his girls young and unmarked.

She told him of dancing at the old clubs in New York City back during Prohibition. How she'd sucked off Frank Sinatra in a restaurant bathroom just before he hit it big. And how all the men from Manhattan to Boston treated her like a queen—jewelry, fancy dinners, silk gowns, the works.

“That's all gone,” she said to Dante, who stood there eyeing a pack of four girls across the street. “That's all gone to shit. No respect these days for an old-timer like myself. Men now think of me as a joke—and if they want some, they ask me to do things I'd never think of doing. Stuff that shouldn't be done between a man and a woman, not ever. Like I was some animal, some pot to piss in.”

Dante nodded, half listening to her, turned and looked at her, and tried to smile. “Maybe it's time to hang it all up.”

“I still got some left, you know,” and the strength of her voice wavered and then cracked, as if she knew she was kidding herself. She wore far too much makeup, and it made her appear clownish and crazed-looking. Her age showed in the loose and lined skin of her neck, and even despite her heavy jacket, Dante could see the bulge of her breasts hanging low at her wide waistline. “I try to be a mother to the new girls, give them advice that'll help them survive the right way, but they won't give it much thought, just carry on for themselves as if there's not a danger in the world. If only they seen what I seen, they'd wise the fuck up.” She had a voice like gravel being tramped on by horseshoes.

He showed her the picture, the one from his wedding that he'd torn down the middle so that only Sheila showed in her silky gown and part of Margo's arm, but she shook her head. “Pretty,” Jill said approvingly. “That's some dress. If I had a dress like that you wouldn't see me out here in the cold. 'Course she's got the body to go with it, too. Not too many girls could get away with a dress like that. I never seen her, though. Was she a hooker?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.”

Jill raised an eyebrow. “You don't know much. I thought she was family?”

“She was.”

“Yeah, well, that's okay. Family don't always know what's going on with each other. My mother thinks I work at Mass General as an X-ray technician.”

“Where'd she get that idea?”

“I took a couple of courses.” She shrugged. “I didn't finish the program.”

“Maybe you'll go back?”

“Maybe. Yeah, that's what I'll do.”

He described Scarletti to her and she nodded. “You've seen him?” he said, surprised.

“Yeah, yeah. Big guy, bigger than you say, but same all the rest. Saw him down by the markets right off Mass Ave. There's a diner there where the girls sometimes go late night. Sometimes they get lucky with the truckers who are about to hit the highway or the guys coming home from the bars and peep shows.”

“You mean Mama's?”

“That's the place.”

“How'd you know it was this guy?”

Jill took a long pull off her cigarette, her cheeks hollowed, and he waited.

“His mouth—he's got that harelip—and, well, the size of him. The size of him was enough to make you look twice, y'know, he takes off his jacket and sweater because it's hot in the place and he's got these massive arms. He was there for an hour or so chatting up the girls—the owner don't mind any at that time, mostly because she likes the business she gets from the truckers, so she don't stir it up none.”

“Did any of the girls end up going with him?”

“Not that night, I don't think, but I got myself a date,” and she winked, “so really, I don't know.”

Under the light above the doorway, she stepped closer and looked at him. “You okay?”

“I'm fine. Why?”

“You're sweating like it's the Fourth of July. Could be that fever going around. I'd get on home if I were you.”

He brought his hand to his face and forehead, felt the wetness there. His hair was drenched. It was as if he'd just put his head beneath a faucet. He closed his eyes and swayed, experiencing a sense of vertigo. When he looked at her again, she seemed somehow out of focus. Behind her the street stretched and narrowed, as if it were unraveling into the distance. Passing cars were blurs of color.

Jill touched his shoulder. “Honey,” she said, “you're not right, and you're looking worse by the minute. Go get yourself home,” and Dante nodded and turned back up the street, and with the world unraveling feverishly about him tried to focus on the pavement as he walked until, in a little bit, the need for a fix and the fever with all its desperate hunger had subsided.

_________________________

Scollay Square, Downtown

DANTE SAT AT
the kitchen table, allowing the smells of braised meat and onions to find their way into his senses dulled by coffee and cigarettes. He hadn't eaten anything since yesterday, and he sat and watched Claudia at the other end of the kitchen, wearing a starchy white apron over a dress that she had made herself. She chopped some parsley, filled a pot with water and placed it on the stove top, then opened the fridge, peering in, but, as if she had forgotten what she was looking for, closed the door and shuffled back over to the stove and turned on the gas to boil the water.

She was the furthest thing from their mother in the kitchen, fretful and manic, her hands fluttering about the counter and cabinets like crippled birds attempting flight, and at that moment, he thought that she was more like their father despite having the exterior, the dark southern Italian features, of their mother. And to make it all the more tough on herself, she'd chosen to cook them one of their mother's favorite dishes,
paccheri alla genovese,
a classic Neapolitan dish that had many components and took hours to stew. He had to remind himself not to be too hard on her, for in these rare moods when Claudia tried to do things for herself, and for him, he usually cut into her, whether deriding her or just playing with her as many older brothers did to their younger sisters. He didn't see how that would do any good, because with one sarcastic comment, no matter how playful, she'd return to her gloomy old self, and in the end accuse him of never thinking she could do anything right.

He sat at the kitchen table, his legs restless, moving from side to side and pumping in a clockwork piston-like motion, and lit another cigarette, cursed it for his throat was raw and sore. He turned down the radio so the voice of the newscaster became muffled and indistinct, and anxiously leaned back and looked out the window into the cold, empty darkness where the neighboring building appeared closer than it had in daylight.

After he'd left Washington Street and the few hookers lingering there, he had spent the afternoon trying to get some information on Bobby Renza, visiting some of the dancehalls and small clubs in and around Scollay Square and the North End. Some people remembered the name but shook their heads as if he were stirring up a curse, while some enthusiastically referred to Renza as “the Sicilian Swoon” and mentioned the song, “Let's Fly Away,” that had given him a taste of fame. Either way, those who did remember him didn't have a bad thing to say about him, but to most, just like his tryst with fame, he was as elusive as he was forgotten.

One old man thought he had moved to Hollywood to make it big, and a middle-aged woman vacuuming the lobby at Storyville said that she'd heard he had died in a car accident after a show down in Orlando, Florida. A talkative old man who worked the ticket booth at a small cabaret club on Hanover Street, the Wild Ace, and who'd known Renza back in those days told him, “He was one of those kids that was good at everything, you know? A real good photographer, too. Got a picture in one of those glossy magazines, you know,
Life,
Time,
I forget. He was a cocky bastard, that's for sure, but I felt kind of bad for him, falling off the charts so quickly. Too much drink probably put out his fire, or he knocked up the wrong woman and had to get the hell out of the city.”

With nothing else to show for it, Dante spent part of the afternoon in a Copley Square pool hall, seeing if he noticed anybody from the scene who might be carrying, or might know of somebody carrying a score. And when that came up dry, he hung out in a few bars in the South End, down below street level, old speakeasies, basement taverns the size of a railcar with low ceilings and the pervasive tang of urine coming from the lone bathroom, chatting over a beer with some familiar, downtrodden people, and he could see in their faces that they were itching inside just like him. He had ended the afternoon at Collins Pub, a haven for the spent, hunched at a corner stool with his back to the door.

Now sitting at the kitchen table, Dante felt a sharp sense of failure overcome him. He wanted to prove to Cal, more than to himself, that he could get some information on his own. And he'd ended the day, just as he'd expected, with shit, with nothing. And that's because without Cal, he was no good, just no good at all.

Claudia wiped her hands on a dishtowel, walked over to the table, and smiled at him in that overexuberant, childlike way of hers. “Smells good, don't it?”

He forced a grin. “Just like Mom's.”

Claudia twisted the knob on the radio until she found some big band number and turned up the volume.

As he watched her twiddle with the knob to get a better signal, the room spun beneath him. His left hand tightened with a strange numbness. Shaking, he put out his cigarette, flexed his hand until sensation came back into it.

“Why don't you do me a favor and open a bottle of wine?”

“Putting me to work now,” he said as he moved beside Claudia and ground the corkscrew into the cork, and the same numb sensation gathered in his other hand. He managed to get the bottle open and pulled two glasses from the shelf. He removed the cork with ease and filled each halfway with red wine. And held the corkscrew, turning it against the light above him, imagining jabbing it into the palm of his hand and turning it through skin, flesh, and bone until he could feel again, even pain, just something.

Claudia had shut off the gas and drained the pasta. He returned to his seat and tried to swallow, tried to breathe and just appear normal.

Claudia laid down the plate, a steaming mass of stewed beef chuck, onions, carrots, and a thick, dark gravy spread over paccheri, large tubes of delicate pasta that she'd overcooked, so when he put his fork into it and stirred up the gravy, most of the pasta split apart in a soggy ruin. He leaned over the plate and, in an exaggerated way, sniffed at the steam rising from the food, and gave a pleased sigh, as if he were about to indulge in the best meal any kitchen or cook could offer. Claudia sat on the other side of the table and took a sip from her glass.

“For Mom,” he said as he raised his own glass.

She nodded and her eyes appeared to glisten. “For Mom, and for you to get better.”

They both bowed their heads, silently blessing their meals, the memory of their mother.

The dish was far too soupy, but after his first bite, he was surprised at how good it tasted. The next few mouthfuls, the stewed meat coming apart in his mouth steaming hot, he nodded toward his sister, who watched him eagerly. “Not bad, Claudia. Not bad at all.”

She drank more from her glass. Her face blushed brightly and when she smiled, he saw her teeth were stained with the Chianti.

“I was thinking,” she said, eyes widening, “maybe after dinner we can sit by the piano like we did when we were kids. Remember the holidays, all the cousins over and Mom at the table telling us what to play?”

“Maybe some other time.”

“Why not tonight?”

He began to raise his hand and remind her what had been done to it years ago, but gripped the tablecloth instead.

“You can still play. It's just like riding a bike, you never forget.”

“I said maybe some other time. Let's just eat, okay.”

He began to sweat, not just a trickle, but beads moving down his brow with an acidic heat, making his temples glisten. He took a deep breath, dug his fork into the pasta, and ate another mouthful.

An old Gene Lindell song came on the radio. Its carefree refrain sounding much too loud and jubilant in their small, dimly lit kitchen.

“Did you ever hear of Bobby Renza, the singer?” he asked.

Claudia looked up from her meal, smiling at him, exposing her teeth stained with wine—an image that reminded him of Miss Grubb. “Of course I did. He was quite something, a real snake from what I hear. You know Sophie Martino? Lives in the North End.”

He shook his head, poured more wine into their glasses.

“She used to date him. He was big then, just had that song become popular. I didn't know her too well or anything, but I worked with her cousin at Schrafft's—you wouldn't believe the things she'd tell us.”

Claudia's smile faded. “Remember what Mom used to say about Sicilians?”

“That they had the worst tempers, and never to trust them.”

“Well, he was Sicilian through and through, and he used to hit her. I guess real bad, too. Broke her nose and bruised her up. When he wasn't the sweet good-looking man wining and dining her, he was accusing her of all kinds of bad things.”

“What made her finally leave him?”

“I guess when he put her in the hospital.” Claudia chewed for a bit, swallowed, and added, “but later I remember hearing that she made it all up because he was carrying on with other women. Somebody even said she got so jealous, she threw herself down the stairs and said Bobby pushed her.”

Dante took a sip of wine but it tasted bitter. His stomach gurgled and turned over.

“Does he have anything to do with Sheila, Dante?”

Dante looked at her.

“They printed her name in the paper just yesterday. She was the one they found on Tenean Beach last week. They all say the Butcher killed her.”

He shook his head. “No, let's not talk about it.”

Both of his hands went numb with the suddenness of a slammed door. A sharp pressure rang in his ears. His stomach turned and he caught a mouthful of vomit in his throat. He pressed his numb hand over his mouth, stood, and hurried to the bathroom. Slamming the door behind him, he fell to his knees and filled the toilet with bile, coffee, and what little of Claudia's meal he'd managed to get down. He flushed once, flushed twice, but still his body was heaving and there was no air left in his lungs, so that when his retching ended, he rolled to the floor and lay on his back, gasping.

He stared at the clawed, leonine feet of the white porcelain tub and began to feel his senses return to him—cold tile against his face, water dripping from the faucet into the sink, the muted trumpets of an old Glenn Miller number coming from the kitchen radio—and sensed that Claudia had opened the door and was there now, afraid to speak, watching him to make sure he was alive.

“I'll be okay, just a bug,” he said as he got onto his knees, pulled himself up by the tub, and stood with his eyes shut, feeling the ground sway beneath him. Whatever was happening to him was far from over, he realized. His heart throbbed against his ribs, and it felt as if he were breathing his last breaths through a pinhole. He forced himself to the sink, turned on the cold water, splashed it over his face, taking it into his mouth and working it over his dried husk of a tongue. When he spat the water out, it turned the white sink a brackish brown.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Claudia asked at the doorway.

With a towel pressed to his mouth, he looked at her. He couldn't see her face, for it seemed distorted by shadow, and he couldn't tell if she was standing in the bathroom with him or was still in the hallway until he felt her touch his shoulder drenched with sweat.

“You're boiling over. Let me call a doctor.”

He tried to speak but couldn't, and he bit down on his tongue, which swelled and choked him, blocking any air from getting in. His eyes rolled up into his skull and he fell back down to the tiled floor. As if from miles away, he heard his sister scream.

SHARP PAINS STABBED
at Dante's gut, waking him, and he turned over the side of the bed and puked into the bucket Claudia had placed there. He looked about and it took him a moment to realize he was in his own bedroom. His mattress was soaked with sweat, and the radiator in the room pinged with pressure, hissing out slight drafts of steam. The thick curtains were drawn against the two windows, and he tried to figure out if it was day or night, and he wondered how long he'd been in the room. A half-full glass of water sat on the nightstand. He reached over and took it, raised it to his parched lips, drinking it all at once.

Dante lay back down in his own sweat and remembered glimpses of Claudia coming and going from his room without a word, leaving a baloney or turkey sandwich or a glass of water, and always locking the door behind her when she left, and he thought with a sense of shame of Claudia bringing him here to his room and pulling off his clothes and dousing him with cold water, trying to clean him because he'd shit himself, and getting him into clean clothes. And later, Claudia on her hands and knees cleaning the vomit from the floor.

A fucking mess, he thought. How lucky I am to still be alive.

He heard the doorknob rattling. The door opened and Claudia peeked into the room. Seeing him awake, she smiled halfheartedly and entered, walked to a kitchen chair she'd placed on the other side of the bed.

“The doctor says you'll be okay,” she said. “You could have died, but you didn't.”

“How long have I been like this?”

“Almost two days. You were real sick, then you slept.” Claudia's eyes glistened with tears. “The doctor says you'll be okay,” she repeated, bringing a hand to her mouth. “Cal stopped by to see how you were.”

Dante felt tears of his own, and he reached out his hand, which Claudia grabbed tightly.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“You just need to get clean, that's all, then you'll be fine.”

He tried to form words to console her, but couldn't. He gripped her hand even tighter, shut his eyes, and in the darkness saw the brief glimmers of fire flame before sleep pulled him under once again.