A Crack in Everything Read online

A few miles from NGT, my car began to shiver and buck, an old habit I thought I’d cured with the last tune-up. I rolled into a gas station, and while the attendant checked the oil and coolant, I phoned Beauford. Although I knew he was on his way to Europe, I left a message. “I’m sticking with Renfrow, but you and I really need to talk.” And for the moment, those words put my conflicting emotions to rest, as if I’d transferred a burden.

  Fluids replenished, the Beemer crept back to my office, where I found Roddie in the parking lot standing next to his van. I was ten minutes late, not bad considering all I’d been through today. Inside, Roddie insisted on taking the stairs, dragging a duffle behind him, wheezing all the way. “I’m going mountain climbing in Colorado, flying out tonight. Should’ve started training years ago.” On the top floor landing he unzipped the duffle and, with a sweetly self-satisfied air, pulled out a coil of fluorescent orange twine. “Tahdah!”

  “Clothesline for the legally blind?”

  “You really don’t get out much, do you. This is premier mountaineer’s rope. I found a little backwater company with space age fibers and no interest in promoting their product, so I invested a few bucks. Acid colors were my idea. Here, I brought some for you. You could use it to tie campaign signs to your car, or macramé plant holders or something.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not artistic, and clamps work better for signs.”

  “Whatever,” he said, a little hurt, I thought. Gripping a knotted end, he whipsawed the rope, which streaked like orange lightning down the stairwell. As I watched him, I imagined the wild child living just under the skin of the clear-eyed man, and I wondered how much of Roddie’s strength, his will to win, he owed to that cheeky polarity.

  He hauled up the rope and jammed it back into his duffle. “I’ve hired a couple of climbers to field test it and I’m tagging along, and speaking of tag-alongs, what am I going to do about Kyle Froy? Jerko filed his papers, and now he’s slapping bumper stickers on every pole in town.”

  “Who is he?” I unlocked my office, and Roddie followed me inside.

  “Carpetbagger. He and his wife just moved to Newton, apartment on Baden Street.”

  “Wait a minute, Roddie. You’re in Ward nine. I’m almost certain Baden’s in ten.” I poked among my collection of municipal maps and spread Newton across the conference table. My finger traced a ward line. “I’m right. Froy can’t run against you.”

  “Must be an old map. City’s always fine-tuning the boundaries.”

  “Well, play it safe and check with the clerk.”

  We got down to the voter survey which Roddie loved…except for everything he hated, and the changes took an hour to hammer out. When we finished, I printed a fresh copy for him to review one last time. “If Huston gets the file no later than tomorrow, your order should be ready early next week.”

  “But I was counting on Friday.” Roddie slumped in his chair. “See, this is my chance to hook Lauren. She’s agreed to handle the mailing. The kids want to help too, even Delia. I’ll be home Sunday in time for the finish. It’ll be a real family affair.”

  “I don’t know about Friday.” Small and fairly low-tech, Huston Printer was a favorite with budget-minded candidates, but rush charges were extortionate. “Twenty-five thousand is a lot of brochures, and they have to be folded. Cost you a bundle.”

  “Whatever he wants, I’ll pay it.”

  This was serious. Thrifty Roddie loved cheap. “Huston usually works late, except Fridays,” I said, punching in his number.

  Money worked its magic. For a thirty-eight percent markup, the surveys would be ready at noon on Friday. “And don’t be late. Huston closes at one.”

  “Think you could you fetch them and bring them to Lauren?”

  “Sorry. I’ll be leaving early for the Cape.”

  “I’ll level with you,” he said. “I was hoping you could use the delivery as an excuse to stop by the house and, I don’t know, have coffee with Lauren.” He smiled, but his voice pressed hard. “See, one on one, you might be able to convince her to join the campaign.”

  “Roddie, some people just don’t like campaigning.”

  “Lauren hates it.” He chuckled, but I was beginning to catch on to Roddie. The bigger his grin, the sadder his heart.

  “You seem down today. Is it Froy? Trust me, he ain’t gonna defeat you. No one is.”

  “I’m a little tired, that’s all. Delia and I spent last night in the emergency room. Appendicitis turned out to be eleven zillion cookies at bedtime.” With a smile that didn’t come near his eyes, he said, “Susan, if anyone could fire Lauren’s interest, it’s you. You convinced me to run when I had so many doubts. Couldn’t you talk to her?”

  A candidate’s morale was more important than his war chest, and I knew what I had to do. “How’s tomorrow?” I sighed.

  He took his BlackBerry into the hall, and when he came back, his eyes had their old liquid glow. “She’ll meet you at her gym. Spaal’s, off the turnpike in Newton. Is six-thirty all right? In the morning, that is.”

  A gym? Grunts and sweat and no privacy? But, okay. If it would help Roddie, I’d meet Lauren on Everest.

  ***

  Everest I could handle, but not my empty apartment, even if the price of company was a dinner I had no stomach for. I drove to Nino’s after all and parked in front of Peter Lombard’s brick building, draped with LOST OUR LEASE banners. The holdouts were Tavola Rustica and MediRX, the restaurant and the purveyor of antacids.

  It was barely seven-forty-five, but Tavola was closed. Through the locked glass doors, I spotted Benny, forty feet away on top of the stove, an eight-burner affair inside a deep chimneyed recess lined with quilted steel. He was hopping from burner to ledge, scrubbing the firewall with a dingy rag. I knocked, and he jumped down and let me in.

  “I made soup,” he announced, “but we didn’t do dinner.”

  “Why not?” I scanned for Nino who should have been darting about, rolling pasta or prepping tomorrow’s vegetables. “Where’s the boss?”

  “Somebody smashed up his apartment.” Benny scrambled back on the stove, dragging a bucket. “Nino had to fix everything and then he got tired and went to bed.”

  I hurried through the interior service hall to Nino’s apartment behind the restaurant and found him sunk in his armchair, head drooping over a glass of anisette. “Nino!” I shouted above a surge of music from his new flat screen TV.

  His head jerked up. “Susie! Don’t stand there. Come in, come in.”

  I hiked across the room. “What’s Benny talking about? What happened?”

  “Not a lot. My apartment got trashed during lunch. I’ve been cleaning all afternoon and still not finished.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Right as rain. You’re the one don’t look so hot.” He picked up the remote and turned off the set. “Gnocchi’ll cure you. I baked it with rapi and gorgonzola.”

  Gorgonzola, the very word put pleats in my stomach. “Never mind food. Tell me what happened here.”

  “I’ll show you.” With a grunt, he got up and led me to a side room where a smashed chest of drawers and a caved-in bed took up most of the floor space. Curtains and rods lay in broken heaps under a window that overlooked the alley.

  “How awful,” I said, sounding even lamer than I felt. An old man’s intimate space had been invaded, the place where he slept unprotected and alone, and I feared there would be no way to bring the old peace back. I tried to reassemble the curtains, but he put out a hand.

  “Leave ’em. Curtains I can fix. But not my torn up pictures.”

  He pulled a worn album off his closet shelf and bent over pages filled with scraps, faces and fences, a shoulder, a dress. Streaks of pale scalp showed poignantly through his sparse, dyed hair. “My family was here, my past. Now it’s confetti. Who would do this
, I ask myself? Lombard is who. Wants to scare me out. Villiaco knows I never leave the restaurant during lunch. So while I’m busy with customers, he sends in his thugs.”

  “I don’t believe it. Lombard’s not into crime. Your neighborhood is a paradise for vandals. You should move somewhere safe.”

  “Don’t start buggin’ me about the lease again.”

  “What did they steal?”

  “Just my peace of mind.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No police. I’ll handle Lombard my own way.” Without another word, he waved me out and shut the bedroom door.

  I wandered around like an insurance appraiser. A cup handle lay on the counter, and there were yellow stains on a baseboard, but outside the bedroom, no real damage. The vandals had ignored everything of value: silver, TV, five shelves of copperware. They’d made mischief, but stolen nothing. Scare tactics against an inconvenient old man? Was Nino right? But Peter Lombard was famous for never quite crossing the cobweb line between sharp practice and criminal behavior. He used money, the courts, but he never broke the law.

  When Nino came back, he was chipper in a fresh plaid shirt, ready to shove a meal down my throat. Again I declined the gnocchi. With a shrug, he tossed a foil package from the refrigerator into the oven, and set up the Neapolitan espresso maker with its upper and lower spouts like out-of-joint noses. “Cuppa coffee’ll fix you up. And a drop of grappa.”

  “Coffee, yes. Grappa, no.”

  Might as well whistle for your cat. Nino went on pouring clear liquid from a green bottle into stubby glasses set on a tray. “My own label. Hundred proof, maybe more.”

  The espresso pot seethed. Nino upended it and brought everything to the table. Inside the foil was a wedge of rosemary foccacia which he pulled into steaming chunks and thrust under my nose. Two pieces had me fainting from bliss. Even the espresso was good, though I knew it would turn my garden-variety insomnia into bug-eyed mania by midnight.

  “Now, something’s bothering you. Don’t lie. I see it in your eyes.” Though he didn’t call it that, Nino fancied himself a psychologist, bursting with common sense, and a dollop of kindness.

  With exaggerated care, I set down my cup. “I found a murdered body today.”

  “Porca miseria! What body?”

  Ignoring the grappa he kept shoving at me, I told him, and by the time I finished, I’d regressed to a nine year old, reveling in the dark joy of tears.

  “What kinda clients you got, killing each other?” Nino spoke gruffly but he patted my hand.

  “She wasn’t my client. Her boss is, and if he killed her, I’m Jane Austen. The police are investigating.”

  “Police.” He spat the word.

  I couldn’t think of a reply, and we both fell silent. Gradually, Torie Moran retreated into someone else’s bad dream.

  “Give me your pictures,” I said, still eager to do something constructive for my half-stand-in grandpa. “I know a photo lab that works miracles.”

  “Never mind the pictures. What’s done is done. I want you to use this…” he waved his hand around his head. “…felony against Lombard when he sues us. And if he doesn’t sue us, I want you to sue him.”

  I noted that cozy “us,” but I wasn’t up for a squabble. “Look, if you can link Lombard to the vandalism, tell me how. Otherwise, stop harping on it.”

  “He did it!” Nino’s larynx wobbled. “And I’m gonna make sure he knows I know. I left him ten messages. Coward hasn’t called me back.”

  “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Meanwhile, will you please stop antagonizing him with phone calls?” I inhaled my grappa, a smoked-lemon scent that was almost inviting. “Answer me something. Am I your consigliere?”

  “Thought I told you to roll your r’s.”

  “Nino, am I?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “My advice is valuable to you?”

  He nodded, a grudging jut of his chin.

  “Take Lombard’s offer. What kind of traffic do you get here? Medical students? Office workers who go home at five o’clock every night? In Cambridge you’ll get the Harvard Square crowd, tourists, people from the suburbs. Any restaurant owner would kill for that location. And Lombard is giving it to you at the Brookline rent.”

  Nino swallowed more grappa. The glass trembled in his hand, and I remembered that he would be seventy-four in November. I drove the thought away. Everyone’s hand shakes once in a while. “I can’t leave,” he said. “It’s not just Tavola. It’s the neighborhood. I’m at home here.”

  An idea flitted through my mind, and I pounced on it. “Home is where you make it. What if Lombard threw in an apartment, walking distance from your new restaurant?”

  “What if. What if.” He rocked his hands. “What if that smoke-eating toad threw in ten million dollars? What if you married yourself a nice Italian boy like that George Cluni guy I saw on talk TV?”

  “George Clooney is not Italian.”

  “You sure? He looks Italian.”

  “Well he’s not.”

  “You’re how old? Twenty-five?”

  “I’ll be thirty in September, a regular old maid.”

  “Thirty! By thirty, I was divorced five years. How come you don’t bring the cop guy around anymore?”

  “We’re not talking about Michael Benedict. I saw him today, and he wouldn’t even look at me. Anyway, I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “Hey, old maid, he’s better than nothing.”

  Yeah, I thought. Lots better. “All right, Nino, maybe I’m not going to get married. Well, boo hoo for me. But you’re wrong about Lombard.” I sipped my grappa, which wasn’t half bad once the esophageal spasm burned itself out. “Lombard is not a toad.”

  Nino grinned. “Yes, he is. He’s a sneaky toad.”

  “Okay.” I laughed into my glass. “But a smart sneaky toad.”

  He leaned over and tapped his glass against mine. “Ti salut, Susanna,” he said, no smile in his eyes. “Lombard is a smart, sneaky, fat, rich toad, but he’s not gonna get my restaurant.”

  Chapter Five

  Alone In The Cold Room

  Bluesy music drifted like musk across the front porch, and through an open window I could see my landlords slow dancing in the parlor. Miles’ hand lightly strummed Martha’s spine, and while I fumbled for my key, she kissed a spot behind his ear. My heart gave a smart little rap against my ribs. Envy. Longing. In four months together, Michael and I had never once danced like lovers.

  Inside my apartment, I listened to the emptiness I usually covered with bustle. The music had stopped, and I guessed M ‘n M were going to bed early tonight. From the kitchen, I called Deirdre and checked my messages. “Not a one,” she said, “but what’s wrong? You sound terrible.”

  I told her, and unlike Nino, who was, after all, a guy, Deirdre understood that Michael’s presence had affected me as much as finding Torie’s body.

  “Not to be callous,” she said, “but this woman meant nothing to you. Michael eased your way.”

  “Her dress was soaked in blood.”

  Silence. Then she murmured, “I’m sorry, Susan. I didn’t mean you don’t care. Its just that Torie Moran is beyond healing, and you’ve got to focus on life.”

  “You’re right about Michael,” I said. “I do miss him.”

  After a long hot shower, I dried off in front of the fan, letting the air rake over my body until I shivered, my mind flooded with images I couldn’t drive away: Michael’s stony face. Chaz’s taw marble eyes. Torie’s foot, toenails painted a fashionable blue.

  ***

  Spaal’s gym was crowded, rock ‘n’ roll blasting, dozens of early birds pumping to the beat. When I spotted her, Lauren was stepping onto a treadmill, an ancient unmotorized model off by itself in a corn
er, the only private space in the gym. She was wearing shorts and a tee shirt and a twisty metal necklace. Tortoise shell clips held her hair off her face. The clips made me think of Torie.

  I walked over. “Lauren? Remember me?”

  “I’d know you anywhere. That serious face.” Not hostile, but not friendly either, Lauren bewildered me. Exercising while she talked seemed a not-so-subtle way to put me and Roddie’s campaign in our place at the bottom of her do-list.

  She began a slow walk, both hands gripping the bars, the roller belt rumbling under her feet. “Roddie told me you wanted to discuss something urgent.”

  Thanks, Roddie. Shift the burden and the blame to me. “He’s worried about the voters surveys,” I hedged. “Carrier-sort mailings get kind of tedious. One mistake, and the post office won’t deliver.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  Somber, indifferent, she walked faster, treading in place and moving miles away from me. I suddenly wanted to disrupt her journey. “Oh hell, Lauren. It’s not about the mailing. It’s about you.”

  “Me?” An eyebrow went up.

  Another day, I’d have launched into a ramble about the importance of family, how it could lift flagging morale. Now all I said was, “Roddie told me he needs your support.”

  “He has my support.”

  “He needs something less tacit. He wants to discuss strategy with you. Go over the issues.”

  “Isn’t that why he talks to you?” Her voice was innocent of irony. I couldn’t catch her eye.

  “I’m just a hired hand. Roddie needs you to be happy about what he’s doing.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Happy? Of course I’ll help with the campaign, but what’s happiness got to do with it?”

  “Look Lauren, all Roddie wants is a tiny show of…enthusiasm. If you started going to parties with him, going to debates, helping him define himself for the voter, you might even find a speck of joy in the campaign.”

  She began to jog, hair clips bobbing, necklace bumping her collarbone “You are very young, Susan.”

  A woman dressed in yellow spandex strutted our way, ankles and wrists bound in velcro weight pouches, dumbbells in her hands. A chastity belt affair crawled between her thighs and up around her waist.