7
“Hi, Pete,” Tom Radnovich began when Orsini answered his phone. “I got
your message. I didn’t think it was urgent because it didn’t seem like it would
make a difference.”
“It
does. Our captain got mad when he got the results of the arraignment and
demanded a new ADA, and got one. This one’s a toughie. She’s part Albanian,
too.”
“It
figures. What’s her name?”
“Tracy
Schiller.” Tom had seen the name before, though he hadn’t met her. She must be
Albanian on her mother’s side, he thought. “I understand she’s already working
on getting the bail revoked, and we’ll probably have another arraignment first
thing Monday morning, at nine.”
“I’ll
be there.” Even if Megan were to spend the night with him, she would need to be
back at the hotel early enough for her kid.
“I’ll
be briefing her this afternoon, so if you’ve got anything to add to the record,
e-mail me. She’s going to serve a seven-ten-thirty-one-A notice based on what
Safet told us.”
“Okay,
if I can think of anything.” Tom had no intention of going home again in order
to log into his computer. Lindsey and Brian were waiting for him. “You’re going
to bring up the Wilner tie-in?”
“Yes,
what you’ve given me so far.”
“That
should be good enough. Have a good weekend!”
“You too!”
You
bet I will, Tom said to himself after he clicked his phone off. And then he
thought of something.
He had
read in the previous day’s Times that just two years earlier the first
transmission of a photograph by wireless phone had taken place,
and that within another two years cell phones would have built-in cameras as a
standard feature. How convenient will that be! he
remembered thinking.
Now he
remembered that when Daniel Wilner’s apartment was searched for clues, a
digital camera was found there, and taken into police custody. But during the
original investigation no one had bothered checking it, since he had not had it
with him at Old Nick’s and it was unlikely to yield any clues for the case at
the time. But he may well have had it with him in Kosovo, and its memory card,
if it was still in the camera, might possibly hold some pictures of KLA
members. He would check it out Monday
after the arraignment; all he would need to do would be to walk down the stairs
of the Bronx County Criminal Court Building into
the subbasement, where the property office is housed.
But
the camera might also have some pictures of a more private nature. When Dr.
Bouchard, Wilner’s mother, had come to New York to identify the body, she had
arranged to have all of Daniel’s things that were not in police custody shipped
to Montreal, along with the body. Tom now wondered if she had made any arrangements
for the articles that were left – computer, camera, papers.
Or would that be up to Megan Kenner, the executor of Wilner’s will?
He wished there were a way of clicking off the part of his mind
that was on his cases, the same way that he clicked off a cell phone. He forced
himself to think about what he would do with the kids. He was only a block from
Karen’s place.
Betty could see Marcia Berman’s eyes light up behind her glasses when,
stepping out of the taxi, she saw her daughter-in-law waiting for her at the
entrance to the teashop. “It’s so good to see you,” Marcia said as she put her
arms around Betty. “For the first time we’ll get a chance to talk like two
grown women, with no men around. No Greg, no Paul.” Marcia laughed, and Betty
joined her as she was led inside. Marcia sat down at the first free table, and
Betty followed suit. “You know,” Marcia went on, “it seems like you’ve always
been part of our family, but first it was as Mireille’s baby, then as Daniel’s
little sister and then as Paul’s girlfriend. And now here you are, almost a
PhD...”
“I
know exactly when I became Paul’s girlfriend,” Betty said with another laugh,
“to the day. But when did I change from Mireille’s baby to Daniel’s little
sister?”
A
large pot of tea with two cups, and a bowl of cookies with two small plates
were brought to their table without being ordered. It seemed to be the standard
operating procedure of the place, or maybe they just knew Marcia Berman.
“When
you were two,” Marcia said as she poured the tea, first into Betty’s cup and
then hers. “It was when Daniel and Harvey started kindergarten together. Mi...
your mother would bring Daniel over and I would take them to
school, and she always had you with her. That’s when Paul noticed you. He was
three, and he wanted to play with you. He said, ‘I like Betty. I hate Daniel,
but I like Betty.’ He was always sad when your mother took you back with her.”
“Did
he really say that he hated Daniel?” Betty tried a sip of her tea, but it was
too hot. Marcia, she noticed, put milk and sugar into her cup and took a drink
before replying.
“You
know Paul, how he always expresses himself so emphatically. Well, he always
did, even as a little boy. Of course he didn’t really hate Daniel. But
he resented him for having become Harvey’s best friend, instead of him.”
“Daniel
thought that Paul hated him, it seems.”
“Did
he tell you that?”
“No,
he told Megan.”
“Ah,
Megan... Now there’s someone that Paul actually hated.”
“He
did? Why?”
“Well,
according to what Harvey told us, she had a reputation for being easy, and he
wanted to get into her pants – that was before he and you got together, of
course – and she turned him down. Harvey said that she just didn’t like boys
younger than her, but Paul took it personally, and he would bristle whenever her
name was mentioned, which Harvey used to do on purpose, just to goad Paul.”
“Paul
has never bristled when I’ve mentioned her,” Betty said while reflecting
on the fact, new to her, that sex seemed to have been freely discussed among
the Bermans. She tried a sip of tea again, and this time it was drinkable. She
took a shortbread cookie, dipped it in the tea, and munched on it between sips.
“Of
course he wouldn’t.” Marcia laughed. “Nothing you would say or do would ever
bother Paul. He worships you. You’re lucky to have a guy like that, but he’s
even luckier to have found a girl like you, so beautiful and smart and sweet.
It’s funny, he was clumsy with girls, as good-looking
as he is. Just the opposite of Harvey,” Marcia said with another laugh. Not
quite the opposite, Betty thought; Harvey wasn’t bad-looking at all. “But about
Megan,” Marcia went on, “we always thought she was a strange girl.” Betty
didn’t know who was meant by we, but didn’t feel like asking.
“Especially after we found out from Harvey about her career.
But your mother has told us that she’s very nice, a good mother, and all that.”
“She’s
all that and more,” Betty said. “So you’ve known about Sam?”
“Yes,
your mother told us.”
“But
Paul didn’t know till just a few days ago, when I told him!”
“Well,
we just never talk about Megan when Paul’s around. Besides, Greg and Harvey
thought that it would be better if Paul didn’t know.”
“Megan
thought so too, until just recently. It felt weird, keeping a secret from my
husband.”
Marcia
laughed again. “I know what you mean. Greg and I try not to keep secrets from
each other, even if they involve indiscretions. That way they don’t feel like
cheating.” Another laugh.
“You
mean, you and Greg...” Betty began but didn’t quite know how
to continue.
“Sweetheart,
life happens,” Marcia said.
Betty
wondered if Harvey and Paul knew about their parents’ indiscretions, but asking
about it would be awkward. Asking if Marcia knew about Greg’s fling with
Mireille would be even more so. “How did you and Greg meet,” she asked instead,
“you being from Toronto?”
“We
met in Israel. I went there in nineteen-sixty-six when I finished university, and
got a job at the Canadian embassy. Leon, your dad’s uncle, went there because
he thought that there was a miracle doctor there who would cure his cancer. Of
course he didn’t. Your father and Fela were there with him for the whole time,
but when he died a bunch of his friends went there for his funeral. Greg’s
firm were Leon’s lawyers, and they sent him to represent
them. He needed to get Leon’s death certificate registered at the embassy, and
that’s how we met.”
Marcia
ordered another pot of tea from the passing waitress, and the conversation went
on for another twenty minutes or so, reaffirming Betty’s long-held feeling that
her mother-in-law was more of a talker than a listener.
Unlike my mother, Betty said to
herself. Au contraire de maman, she confirmed to herself in her mother
tongue.
After
a warm hug and a mutual promise that they would see more of each other back in
Montreal, Betty walked back to the Spadina subway station. Along the way she
suddenly found herself walking amid some eight or ten young men, about her age
or a little older, coming out of a bar. She was used to male attention,
sometimes of a boisterous nature, but these men gave her no more than bashful
glances, and their mood was subdued. She gathered, from the Blue Jays caps some
of them wore and the talk she overheard, that they had just seen their team
lose to the Phillies. Betty liked to ski and play tennis – in the respective
seasons – but spectator sports had never interested her much, and she was glad
that Paul – unlike Harvey and Daniel, who were passionate soccer fans – shared
her lack of interest. But this time she felt empathy with the dejection that
these guys showed, quietly, not noisily as their Montreal counterparts might
do.
And
she found herself looking at the men. She had always – at least since she was
twelve – enjoyed looking at cute guys, in the same way that she might look at
beautiful flowers or stately trees or handsome dogs (the quadruped kind). But
this time it seemed different: she became aware of judging them by attractiveness.
Not only that, but by whether they were attractive to her. It so
happened that none of them were anything but borderline at best. She felt a
sort of relief, but the experience made her wonder.
At the
station the group split up, and only two of the men went to the Bloor line
platform with Betty. By then she had lost interest in them.
She
got off at Kipling to take the 45 bus back to Richview. Just after her a man
and a woman, both in their thirties and fairly good-looking in an Anglo way –
tall, blond, blue-eyed – boarded the bus and sat down across from her. They
were chatting in a friendly way, but it wasn’t obvious to Betty if they were a
couple; they might even have been brother and sister. She didn’t quite know why
she was curious about them until she realized that she found the man
attractive. More than that: she felt attracted to him. She even became aware of
a stupid, juvenile thought darting through her brain: I could get him away
from her, I’m prettier.
Was
she ready to commit what Marcia had called an indiscretion? And if she did,
would she really not be cheating on Paul if she told him?
She didn’t quite know when they had started, but Megan became aware of
nagging doubts about her date with Tom Radnovich when two lines of thought
coalesced in her mind. She wondered if it was appropriate to get casually involved
with the detective who was investigating the death of someone that she had been
intensely involved with. She also wondered about the efficacy of leaving Sam
with Betty. There was no doubt that the boy had taken to his aunt with all his
being, but he had never before been left with a babysitter, and it didn’t seem
right that the first attempt at doing so, with no previous trial runs, would be
for a whole evening, perhaps an extended one.
Still,
the prospect was a tempting one. Megan Kenner had never been one to fight
temptation, and she decided that canceling the date at this point would be
premature.
The
Fernández tax return was ready, in its sealed and stamped envelope, awaiting
mailing from the airport the next day. The house was quiet. Sam was asleep and
Betty was out. Megan began to pour herself a glass of sherry when the phone
rang. It was Betty.
“Hi, Megan. I’m on my way home...”
“You
mean you’re going back to Montreal and leaving all your stuff here?”
Betty giggled.
“No, silly, I’m just about to get off the bus and walk to your house.
It’s my home for now. Is Sam awake?”
“No,
not yet,” Megan said while glancing at her watch. It was almost five, unusually
late for him to be still asleep. The last time he had napped for so long had
been in March, when he had had a cold. Could he be getting something now?
A day before getting on an airplane?
She
went into Sam’s room. He was breathing quietly. She touched his forehead with
the back of her fingers. It felt a little warm, but normal for the 27-Celsius
weather that Toronto was enjoying these days. And he must have been about to
wake up, because the gentle touch of his mother’s hand was enough to get his
little body stirring. He opened his eyes and began to make a face as though he
were about to cry, but when he saw Megan’s smiling face above him he smiled
back. She felt her chest swelling with maternal love, and bent down to kiss him
on both cheeks before picking him up in her arms.
“Where’s
‘tie Betty?” he asked in what may have been his first grammatical sentence.
“She’ll
be coming soon, sweetie,” she said.
“Coming
soon, sweetie!” he repeated and laughed. But his mood suddenly changed again
and his face took on the about-to-cry look. Could something be hurting him?
“Is
something hurting you?” Megan asked.
“Hurting,”
Sam said.
“Where?” She doubted that Sam would answer her question,
especially if whatever was bothering him was internal. But before he even had
the opportunity to respond, the doorbell rang.
“‘Tie
Betty!” he exclaimed, happy once more. Betty must have forgotten, Megan
thought, that in Richview – as she had told her – doors were
usually left unlocked. “Come in!” she shouted. “Come in!” Sam echoed her and
laughed again.
Betty
entered in a gushing mood. “Hi Megan! Hi Sam!” she
said, and kissed them both. “Can I hold him?” she asked Megan.
“He
may need a diaper change,” Megan said. “After sleeping is just about the only
time he does.”
“Can I
do it?” Betty aside. “I need to practice.”
“You
mean, you and Paul...” Megan began as she handed Sam to Betty.
“No,”
Betty said, laughing. “I mean for tomorrow, when you go out on your New York
date.”
“Yeah,
Sex and the City,” Megan said.
“What’s
that?”
“It’s
an American TV series about women and men in New York. It just started running
in Canada, on Bravo.”
“You
mean Bravo!” Betty said, with a rising inflection. “The exclamation mark is
part of the name. Isn’t that stupid?”
“Yeah,”
Megan said with a chuckle. “But anyway, we can watch the second episode
tonight.”
“Did
you see the first?”
“Yeah,
last Saturday. I’ll tell you about it. After you change Sam’s
diaper.”
“Ooh!
I get a reward! Okay, tell me what to do!”
In
fact Megan didn’t wait for the diapering to be completed before giving Betty a
synopsis of the show, but did so while interspersing instructions. Sam was
uncharacteristically quiet, but took his aunt’s sometimes awkward manipulations
in stride.
“I
don’t think it’s the kind of show that Paul would watch,” Betty said. “Fuck
Paul,” she added after a pause.
“Bravo!”
Megan said. They laughed together.
It turned out to be a good kite-flying day: mild weather – about seventy
Fahrenheit – and a good wind of ten or eleven knots. Lindsey and Brian had had
fun – though Brian had been sniffling to an unusual degree – and they were
ready for their customary pizza at Leonardo’s.
While
waiting for the pizza, Tom Radnovich switched his cell phone on to check for
messages. There were two, one from Karen and the other from Orsini.
“I
forgot to tell you,” Karen’s voice said. “Brian’s having an allergy attack and
needs to take some mild antihistamine; any generic will do. Could you please get
him some? Thanks.”
There
was a Rite Aid half a block away, and Tom went out to
get the medication while the kids stayed in their booth, playing some sort of
word game that he didn’t understand. Once he was on the sidewalk he played
Orsini’s message.
“Hi Tom,
it’s Pete. Call me as soon as you get this message.
There’s a major development.” There was a pause. “Lejla’s mother wants to
talk.” The addendum was probably an afterthought on Orsini’s part, due to his
understanding that his fellow detective would want to know what the fuck is
going on.
Selima
Begović didn’t speak much English, so obviously Radnovich,
the designated Slavic hitter of the Bronx, was needed.
He had
been getting bored with the Begović case, especially since the reopening
of the Wilner case. He had been put on it only because he knew Serbocroat, and
since no one was talking he felt useless. But now things were different: Lejla
was dead, and Selima was willing to talk. He would get back to Orsini right
away.
In the
drugstore he wondered whether to get the adult or the child dose of
chlorpheniramine for Brian. He was a big kid, probably over 100 pounds by now,
and if a 100-pound woman took an adult dose, why wouldn’t a 100-pound boy?
On the
way back to the restaurant he called Orsini, who answered the call immediately,
as though standing by for it.
“Listen,
Tom,” he said, “Missis Begović went to the
hospital to see Lejla. She was the one who called the nurse when she saw that
the girl wasn’t breathing. As I understand it, the father wants nothing to do
with her and doesn’t want to give her a Muslim burial. Anyway, she wants to
talk to us, as soon as possible, so we figured that tomorrow afternoon would be
best. It’s got to be before the Murova arraignment.”
“
Who’s we?”
“Me and Tracy Schiller, basically. We talked to your
precinct and we know that you’ve got your kids and want to keep them as long as
possible. We figured on four o’clock. How’s that?”
“It
should be okay. I’ll check with my ex and get back to you.”
Before
entering the restaurant he called Karen, briefly explained the situation to her
– “some work has come up,” he said, remembering that this was precisely what
had driven them apart – and got her agreement, which he immediately reported to
Orsini.
Lindsey
and Brian didn’t seem to mind that they would be home a few hours early the
next day. Both were enrolled in a summer program, and Lindsey welcomed the
extra time for working on a project.
After
dinner he took them to his apartment for the usual Saturday-evening treat: a
Western movie. He had just recently bought a DVD player – he had determined to
do so once he found one under $250 – and he would inaugurate it that evening by
showing a DVD of Tombstone, which he had rented for the occasion from
the Blockbuster store on Third Avenue.
He had
acquired a taste for the Western genre when he was around ten, by watching old
oaters on television. Sometimes these films would run in the middle of the
night, and he and Gabe would sneak into the living room to watch them, very
close to the set, with the sound turned down to barely audible. But Gabe never
became the fan that Tom did.
And then,
at fourteen, standing in the ticket line for The Missouri Breaks, he met
the almost-seventeen-year-old Ellen Daugherty from Montana, who was visiting
New York for the summer. She persuaded him to see with her, in the course of the
next few weeks, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and The Outlaw Josey
Wales. And so she became his first girlfriend, and he became a fan of
modern Westerns.
He
also enjoyed wearing cowboy attire – Western shirts, jeans, boots, but no hat
(that would look too silly in New York) – and he would put on such an outfit
for a not-too-formal date (another result of Ellen’s influence). He found that
women often got turned on by his quick unsnapping of the shirt, followed by a
sight of his muscular chest. Of course he would dress this way for Megan
Kenner. Once the kids were in bed he would look in his closet for the
appropriate shirt.
Megan could see that Betty hadn’t particularly enjoyed the show, but it
had made her restless. She was not surprised when, instead of talking about it,
Betty got personal.
“You
said that you were thirteen when you first had sex,” she began.
“Well,
almost fourteen. It was at a Christmas party, and my birthday’s in February.”
“Who
was it with?”
“My second cousin Joel. You know, Amy’s brother. In those
days the Kenner-MacDougal clan used to have big parties, before some feuds set
in. Mostly around sex,” Megan said with a laugh.
“How
old was he?”
“Nineteen or twenty.”
“That’s
right,” Betty said. “I remember that Amy’s sister and brother were quite a bit
older than her.”
“Yeah. If you want to know more, my first four were all
cousins of one degree or another, while I was still in grade eight. Once I was
in grade nine, on the main campus, I started on the boys at North Am. I saved
Daniel for last.” Megan laughed again, and this time Betty laughed along with
her.
“Did
you ever do it with Harvey?” Betty asked with some hesitation.
“Once,
when I was in grade ten and he was in eleven. It didn’t work out too well. But
then Paul tried to hit on me.”
“I
know. His mother just told me this afternoon. She said that you turned him
down, and that’s why he hates you.”
“I
didn’t exactly turn him down. I just ignored him. I suppose that’s even worse.”
Betty
suddenly laughed. “Look at us! We’re talking about my husband and my new best
friend!”
“Dear
Abby,” Megan said mock-seriously, “my husband hates my best friend. Do I have
to choose?” Both women laughed.
“Now,”
Betty said after a pause, “would you like to know how I felt about the show?”
“Yeah. I was wondering.”
“Well,
I don’t just think that Paul wouldn’t like it, I know he wouldn’t.”
“What
about you?”
“Well,
first of all I thought it was kind of silly, the idea that models
are the embodiment of female beauty. I never thought of them
as anything but living mannequins, maybe because in French it’s the same word.
Do you think that there really are men who think of models as the most
desirable women?”
“Of
course there are, lots of them. Look at all the movie
stars and rock stars who married models: Richard Gere, Billy Joel...”
“I
don’t think of movie stars and rock stars as real people; they’re in a world of
their own. But the world of Sex and the
City also seems to be a strange world, where women talk about nothing but
clothes and sex. I mean, when you and me and Kathy and Donna were chatting this
morning, we talked about books and language and politics...”
“And
sex.”
“Well,
yes, about birth control, and monogamy. But on the show they don’t move from
subject to subject, like real people do.”
“Maybe
you’re right,” Megan conceded. “But compared to the movies I used to be in, Sex
and the City is the acme of realism.” They laughed.
“Speaking
of which,” Betty said after a lull, “now that you’re retired, have you thought
of moving back to Montreal?”
The
question struck Megan as preposterous, and she was stunned for a moment. “Why
would I do that?”
“Well,” Betty said hesitantly, “it’s your hometown, and
you’ve got family...”
“I
haven’t been close to my family in years. Toronto is my home: it’s where I have
my house, my friends, my practice, my doctors... Besides, and I hope you don’t
take this the wrong way, I’m an Anglo, and I want Sam to grow up as an Anglo
without an inferiority complex. You see, you’re bilingual, and so was Daniel,
but you guys are a special case. You got to go to an English school only because
Daniel went to an English kindergarten just before Bill One-Oh-One went into
effect.”
“We
could have gone to a bilingual school. There is one in Saint-Laurent – the only
one in Quebec – but it’s Catholic.”
“See
what I mean? Here in Toronto there are bilingual public schools, not just
English-French but also Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and I can send Sam to any
one of them if I want to, regardless of ancestry. The only thing I miss about
Montreal is poutine.”
It was
Betty’s turn to be stunned. “You’re kidding!” she said at last.
“No, I
love poutine. But I understand that it’s coming to Toronto. It’s going to
become the national food of Canada!”
“But
it seems so vile! French fries with gooey crap on them!”
“Have
you had it?”
“No, and neither has
anyone that I know, except Harvey, and
he’ll try anything.”
“Don’t
knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“I
guess you’re right,” Betty said sheepishly. “And it’s not the only thing I have
yet to try.” They laughed again.
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