Styx & Stone (37 page)

So what if Gigi had slept with Hildy prior to having met me? That kind of thing had never troubled me in the past. My attitude toward relations between the sexes has always been libertarian. Some might say libertine. I don’t believe in baring my soul to the men I know, though I strive to be honest. This politic has functioned smoothly, usually without seams, both for the men I go with and myself. In the case of Gigi Lucchesi, however, I felt the traffic begin to run in one direction only. A perception, and a false one perhaps, but I didn’t cotton to falling like a ton of bricks for anyone, let alone a man just out for a joyride.

To return to the subject, I willed myself not to mind that Gigi had had an affair with Hildy, if indeed he had. Who cared what he’d done before he’d done it with me? I didn’t, I swore to myself. No way.

But I did.

Then I realized that my musings had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Gigi was my problem, not my father’s or Ercolano’s. He had no real reason to harm either one of them, but he had harmed me, left me without a word.

I gazed at my handiwork: the worksheet of suspects from Columbia University’s Italian Department. I’d only physically eliminated three people, of whom one was dead, one comatose, and one decrepit with age. The others might well have had some hidden motives, but I had no idea how to link any of them to both crimes. Of the entire group, Gustav Emmel stood out as the only one with motive and opportunity. Emmel’s past was the key. He was lying to save his skin. Deportation was one thing; proving he was not Gualtieri Bruchner might prove impossible in Italy, where so many people know and respect him. But murder in New York State would mean the electric chair. Why shouldn’t he lie?

Where, then, was my proof? If there was none, perhaps a burglar did break in and club my father on the head; maybe Ercolano got a little careless in the tub and paid for it with his life.

For a moment, I was confused, didn’t know what to believe. Lucky for me, the intercom buzzed to announce Detective McKeever and chased away the doubts; doubts about things I knew to be right. These were not isolated, unrelated examples of peril in twentieth-century New York. The radio was tossed into the tub by the same person who’d hit my father on the head, I was sure of it.

“Hello, Jim,” I said, holding the door open for him a few moments later. “Please come in. Maybe you can give me some information to break the logjam in my head.”

“I might be able to help you,” he said, removing his hat as he stepped inside. “Do you remember the key we found at the department?” he asked once he’d taken a seat in the study.

“I sure do,” I said. “It was the key to this apartment. What about it?”

“Well, I do things by the book, as I once told you. And the book says when you find evidence like that key, you check it for fingerprints.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t find Ercolano’s prints on it.”

“No,” he said. “Either the key was left near his office door by chance, or to throw suspicion on him.”

“So which was it?”

He frowned. “I don’t know, but I doubt it matters.” He fiddled with his hat. “You see, we’d come to a dead end on this case, so I asked for print samples from everyone.”

“How did they take it?”

“Some good, some not so good. Miss Little was worried her prints would be on the key, even if she hadn’t stolen it, since she handles all the keys. Victor Chalmers kind of liked the experience; said he was fascinated by police work. That Purdy kid refused to be printed at first, but his friend Petronella finally convinced him to give a sample.”

“And Bruchner?” I asked, still unsure what I’d do about him.

“Volunteered without question. The old man, Saettano, seemed miffed, but submitted. Hildy Jaspers didn’t like getting her fingers dirty, but she went along.”

Now the question I dreaded. “And Luigi Lucchesi?”

“He didn’t like it but he gave us a sample.”

“OK, Sergeant. I don’t have a snare drum; what’s the verdict?”

“We isolated a partial print that seems to belong to Mr. Lucchesi. It was no contest for the others. They didn’t come close.”

I was floored. My temples began to throb. He’d duped me; played me like a harmonica. I had slept with him, damn it! The imaginary conversation with my father returned to my head:

“Well, Ellie, how did you proceed in your investigation?”

“By the book, Dad. First I investigated every possible suspect, except one.”

“And which one was that?”

“Funny you should ask. By the purest of coincidences, it turned out—you’re gonna love this—it turned out that he was the guilty party.”

“Oh, my, what bad luck for you, my girl. I suppose you had no reason to suspect him. Perhaps you had little opportunity for intercourse with him.”

“As a matter of fact, I had quite a bit of intercourse with him. You see, while I was chasing after the others, harassing and accusing, I was screwing him in your house!”

I fumbled for a cigarette, struck the match once, twice, three times, took one puff, then put it down.

“Have you talked to him?” I asked. “What’s his explanation? What’s his motive?”

McKeever lit a cigarette of his own, then shook his head. “I haven’t asked him,” he said. “We just got the results back an hour ago and haven’t located him yet. But he had reasons. I understand that your father was pursuing an investigation of his behavior with an undergraduate from Barnard.”

“That was blown out of proportion,” I said, a little too earnestly. “And people don’t kill for that.”

“They might if it meant dismissal, shame, and return home to face mandatory military service.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I want to solve this for you, Ellie,” he said softly. “I’ve been digging around.”

I wrestled my heart into submission, took a deep breath, and tried to remind myself that I didn’t care. But my head was so muddled with thoughts of how little I cared about Gigi Lucchesi, that all I could think about was Gigi Lucchesi.

“I, um, I’ve been wondering if I could have another look at Ercolano’s apartment,” I muttered, just to have something to say. I was distracted beyond measure. “No, not his apartment, his, um, his things.”

“His personal effects?” asked McKeever, voice strong and imposing.

“Right, his personal effects. Do you have them?”

McKeever shook his head. “Just the keys,” he said, pulling a chain from his pocket. “The rest of it is locked up in the evidence room.”

I took the keys from him and turned away absently. Barely glancing at them, hardly concentrating on the silver in my hands, I thought of Gigi swinging some blunt object at my father’s head. Then at mine. I jingled the keys a couple of times, counted them in my palm—three, two latchkeys and one mailbox key—then handed them back to McKeever.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“Arrest Luigi Lucchesi as soon as we find him.”

I was quiet, and McKeever noticed. He gazed at me with some kind of emotion in his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to comfort me or kiss me.

“Are you OK, Ellie?” he asked.

I nodded vigorously. “Everything’s fine. Looks like you’ve got your man, Jim,” I said, forcing a smile. “Congratulations.”

McKeever left at four thirty. I lay down on my father’s bed and stared at the ceiling for an hour, tormenting myself alternatively with the ache of having lost the divine object of my desire, then the sting of having been taken in by the devious incubus. It’s never easy to admit to foolishness, but the shame compounds itself when you still hunger for the source of your humiliation, and you wonder to yourself if you’d let it happen again for one more night in his arms.

I slid off the bed, lit a cigarette, and paced the room. The nicotine rush I had wanted earlier hit me hard now, biting my lungs and dizzying my head. I had to sit until the spinning had passed, holding the burning cigarette in my left hand, resting it on my knee. Once my head stopped swirling, I took a last deep drag, then stubbed out the butt in an ashtray. Then I lit another, in defiance of Gigi Lucchesi; he would not deprive me of a good smoke.

I wandered into the study, poured myself a tall Scotch, and finished the cigarette at my father’s desk. About halfway down to the bottom of the tumbler, I made my way over to the hi-fi, where the Rachmaninoff still sat on the turntable. On the middle shelf, among Mom’s records, I found an old 78 of Cole Porter songs. I put it on, right over the Rachmaninoff concerto that I had used to seduce myself with Gigi. Why had he come to me that night? Perhaps he’d left some evidence behind and needed to collect it. And I’d helped him.

I dropped the needle and fell into the sofa, drink in hand, and lit yet another cigarette. The first track was “
I Get a Kick out of You
,” and I remembered his smile and flirtations. “
I’ve Got You under My Skin”
—Gigi’s lips, his eyes, his . . . Everything that tickled my desire, none of which I’d ever touch again. “
Let’s Do It
.” Birds, bees, educated fleas, and I was thinking of how I had enjoyed his company. The first notes of “
Just One of Those Things”
began, recalling Dorothy Parker and an anonymous boyfriend; Abélard and Héloïse; Romeo and Juliet; et al.—famous pairs who never managed to make love work. I could count myself as lucky among the group; Romeo poisoned himself beside his Juliet, while Abélard was castrated and shipped off to a monastery. But once the introduction’s catalogue of unfortunate lovers was through, the song’s lyrics spanked me, hitting my nail on the head:

It was just one of those things,

Just one of those crazy flings,

One of those bells that now and then rings,

Just one of those things.

I bounded to the hi-fi and yanked the needle off the disk, sending a shriek through the nearby speakers, and a gouge across the record. I flipped the disk across the room, where it collided with the bookcase. The bookcase won.

I drained the last of my Scotch into my mouth, poured another, equally as tall, then sat some more. The silence was too much. I thought of Angela Farber and wondered if she’d like to trade hard-luck stories. There was no answer when I buzzed her door. I called the elevator to ask if she’d gone out.

“Oh, yeah, Mrs. Farber left here about a half hour ago,” said Rodney. “All dressed up, shiny dress, fox stole, saucy little hat . . . Looked like she was going out for dinner and the theater.”

I drifted back to my father’s apartment, cursing Angela Farber’s improved fortunes; just a day or two before she couldn’t get a date to save her life. I returned to the study where I picked up my Scotch and looked for another record. Reluctant for a second Porteresque experience among Mom’s records, I delved into my father’s collection. As long as I avoided Rachmaninoff, I’d be fine. My fingers tripped along the alphabetical path, starting with Albinoni. Then came the three
B
s, Chopin, Dvorak, Elgar, Franck, Grieg, Hindemith, Ives, and so on, until I found myself in Rachmaninoff’s neighborhood. From A to Q, I had been unable to choose, perhaps subconsciously, so I would have to listen again to the late Romantic Sergei Rachmaninoff. No, damn it. I moved on, only to come nose to nose with Gioacchino Rossini. My eyes ran across the titles:
Il Barbiere di Seviglia
,
La Cenerentola
,
La Gazza Ladra
. . . I tugged at one album in particular, pulling it out of the tight line. It was one of the records I had found on the floor earlier in the week, one of those strewn about but not destroyed. It was
Guglielmo Tell
, and all thoughts of Gigi Lucchesi dissipated into air.

My ears tingled, and the shiver of imminent illumination tripped over my skin, from my toes to the top of my head. I placed my glass on my father’s desk, never taking my eyes off the album’s dust cover, which I raised in front of me at arm’s length. Orchestral excerpts from
Guglielmo Tell
, by Gioacchino Rossini, performed by the NBC Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini.
Guglielmo Tell
, and I recalled two conversations with Gustav Emmel about Billy Chalmers and Guelphs. I brought the album to my lips and planted a kiss on Toscanini’s bald head.

“That’s for Gigi,” I said, then ran to change my clothes.