Invisible Boy (22 page)

“You drove down the Taconic, from Maine?” asked Pagan. “I would’ve thought Ninety-five was the most direct route to Manhattan.
Weren’t you staying in Hartford?”

“We spent the weekend with Larry’s youngest son, out in Litchfield,” said Mom. “
Such
fun!”

“I hope you girls won’t mind that we told
my
kids first,” said Larry.

Pagan tipped her head closer to mine, hissing “You have
so
got to be fucking kidding me” through clenched teeth.

Mom brushed the fingertips of her free hand lightly across the inside of Larry’s wrist, with a sidelong-glance bonus.

He cleared his throat, cheeks going pink.

Be still, gag reflex
.

“We hope you girls don’t have any plans for Valentine’s Day,” said Mom.

“February?” I asked. “In
Maine
?”

She ignored that, showing us her gumball-machine engagement ring. “Larry had this made by the most
charming
little man in Bar Harbor. I’ve always adored dark sapphires.”

The waiter returned with our cocktails.

Should’ve held out for the methadone.

The only time I got Mom alone was when she tailed me to the ladies’ room, in the lull before dessert.

I didn’t have the balls to give her shit about Pierce in front of the aproned little-old-lady attendant, not least since I
didn’t really have cash to spare for the tip saucer unless I planned to walk home.

“Well? What do you think?” asked Mom, eyes crinkling up adorably as she smiled at me via the mirror over the sinks.

I think this guy’s ball four, coming in high-and-outside and not worth a twitch of your shoulders. And we both know you’re
gonna swing for it anyway.

The attendant turned on the taps in front of Mom, then unveiled a fresh bar of soap.

I twisted my own faucets quickly on. Feudalism creeps me out, no matter how vestigial.

“He seems like a very kind man,” I said. “And he obviously adores you.”

My mother lifted her dripping hands from the sink. The silent attendant draped them with a starched piqué towel, turning off
the taps in lieu of a curtsy.

Mom was going to feel like shit when she bolted this time. Because he was nice enough, and she really never meant any harm.

“Larry sat me down to go over his portfolio last week,” she said, spritzing her wrists with the house bottle of Joy, “so I’d
know you children would always be taken care of.”

“That’s touching, Mom.”

Too bad my mother was no gold digger.

Bet she even gives back the ring.

I dried my hands, watching her breeze out the ladies’-room door.

Smiling weakly at the aproned old lady, I dug out my last five bucks, trying to smooth out the bill’s wrinkles before I laid
it gently across her little white plate.

We burst into our apartment an hour later, sans midlife lovebirds.

“Fucking
Maine
?” said Pagan. “In fucking
February
?”

“I don’t even want to
think
about it,” I said.

“What is she, nuts?” asked Pagan.

“Oh, right,” I said, “
news
flash.”

She flopped onto the sofa. “Right out of her head.”

“Twisted,” I said. “Oobie-shoobie.”

Sue drew a pack of ‘21’ matches out of her pocket and held them up. “
Fuck
shrimp cocktail. Who’ll join me in a bong hit?”

Dean called from Texas that night, around eleven.

“You got in okay?” I asked.

“Piece of cake, and all the guys at Chevron were impressed with my preppy coveralls.”

“Where’re you staying?”

“A Holiday Inn out by the refinery,” he said. “King Leisure Suite.”

“Ooooo… swanky.”

“Bed’s too big without you.”

“Same here,” I said, patting his empty pillow in the dark.

“How’d lunch go?”

“Mom’s getting married.”

“Again?”

“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe the fourth time will be the charm.”

T
uesday morning I came up the subway stairs into a biting rain. The sky was low and gray, and everyone around me kept their
heads ducked against the sooty blast of wet.

Fall, already.

Skwarecki’s statue loomed beside me: a smugly chubby guy, knee-deep in naked dead chicks but draped in a Tarzan diaper to
protect his own modesty.

Fat Boy’s right hand rested loose on the hilt of his sword, blade casually balanced across the top of his shoulder. Gripped
in his left fist was a skein of hair, at the bottom of which a woman’s severed head dangled like a purse.

I bulled my way forward into the slanting rain, shoulders hunched. I could see the twinned concrete hulks Skwarecki had described
in the distance. There was another sculpture out front, stainless steel and a lot more modern. The rainy wind made it whirl
like a giant cheese grater.

The floor inside was dirty and wet. I got in line for the metal detector, scanning the crowd beyond until I saw Skwarecki
waving at me.

“No raincoat?” she asked when I’d made it through. “What do you, wanna to catch pneumonia?”

We were in a tall atrium jammed with people. Dozens of voices bounced off the walls. Skwarecki walked point through the crowd,
me trotting close behind. We passed several courtrooms. All I could see as we rushed alongside each set of glass-paneled doors
was
IN GOD WE TRUST
writ huge on the far wall inside, above the head of a judge.

Skwarecki flashed her badge to some guy in a beige uniform and said, “She’s with me,” before he waved us ahead into a long
hallway. The names on the office doors we passed were a global mishmash: Tsangarakis, Seide, Murphy, Chu, Lapautre.

We finally arrived at a reception area manned by a phalanx of no-nonsense-looking women whom my mother would have described
as “salty old broads.”

The one in the middle held up one finger until she’d finished transferring a phone call, then grinned up at Skwarecki. “What
brings you down here this fine morning?”

“Hey, Rosemary,” said Skwarecki. “We’ve got an appointment with Bost.”

“I’ll let her know you’re here.” Rosemary handed me a register to sign and gave me a bar-coded
GUEST
sticker for the front of my coat, then buzzed us in past another sturdy set of doors.

The hallway beyond was painted a shiny institutional green from the floor to waist level, with grimy white above. We passed
a row of head shots, former DAs in sequence, from the twenties onward. I watched stiff celluloid collars give way to soft
fabric, while bow ties morphed into Windsor-knotted four-in-hands.

Bost’s office was right next to a group shot from the mid-seventies, judging by the stunning width of the attorneys’ lapels.

Skwarecki rapped a quick “shave and a haircut,” then opened the ADA’s door. I followed her inside.

Bost stood and reintroduced herself, hand stretched out across her desk to shake mine.

“Detective,” she said, “thanks so much for bringing Ms. Dare down today.”

Skwarecki nodded. “No problem. I figured she’d need a little help navigating—maybe we’d all get some lunch later.”

We sat down in the visitors’ chairs. There were some snapshots and Xeroxed cartoons pinned to a corkboard behind Bost’s head,
the window to her left giving a depressing view of the day outside. Next to me was a framed black-and-white shot of the old
steel globe left over from the 1964 World’s Fair, in Flushing Meadows.

“I see you’re admiring the Unisphere,” said Bost, “unofficial icon of Queens.”

“It was always one of the first things I recognized outside the airport as a kid whenever I came east,” I said, “along with
those towers that looked like they had a stack of pancakes on top.”

“I’ve always loved that thing,” said Bost. “I remember my dad taking me right up into its shadow, all excited about the coming
wonders of the Space Age.”

“I’ve never seen it up close,” I said.

“It’s huge—twelve stories tall. There were jets of water shooting up all around it back then. Spectacular.”

“What are the rings for?” I asked, pointing at the three silvery trails circumnavigating the central globe.

“Orbits,” said Bost. “They’re supposed to mark the paths of Gagarin, Glenn, and the Telstar satellite.”

“Cool,” I said, turning from the photograph to look across the desk at her.

“Aw,
Christ
,” she said, staring up at the ceiling.

I raised my eyes to the same spot, where a patch of yellowed damp was leaking through from above. Two fat drops plummeted
to the surface of her desk, inches away from a fat manila file folder.

Bost snatched the file out of the way as more yellow drops started plopping down, thick and fast. “Swear to
God
, this building…”

Skwarecki stood up. “What say the three of us grab an early lunch?”

“Brilliant plan,” said Bost, reaching for her coat.

*   *   *   

We got a booth by the window at an Italian place halfway up the block on the other side of the boulevard.

“What
was
that?” I asked as we scootched in across the red vinyl. “Are the pipes backed up or something?”

Skwarecki laughed.

“The prisoners are backed up,” said Bost.

“How?” I asked.

Skwarecki reached for her menu. “The floor above the prosecutors’ offices—it runs from the jail to the courthouse. The guards
hate having to process the inmates twice, so if things get behind schedule they just lock the hall at both ends and let them
all stew up there.”

“You have fifty guys sitting around for five, six hours,” explained Bost, “eventually they gotta use the facilities.”

“Problem is, there aren’t any,” added Skwarecki. “I mean, it’s a hallway.”

I stared at the two of them. “That was piss?”

They nodded.

“Leaking through the goddamn ceiling?”

Bost gave me a thumbs-up in confirmation. “Not like they don’t know we’re right under.”

“Dude,” I said. “That is
completely
repulsive.”

She shrugged. “My world, and welcome to it.”

Skwarecki gave me a little punch to the shoulder. “You just gotta heart New York, am I right?”

We were picking over our lunch plates, initial hunger sated.

Skwarecki’d ordered the manicotti, Bost a Caesar salad. I was staring down at a platter of eggplant parm, hoping I could negate
the image of felonious urine given enough red sauce.

“The first step is the grand jury,” Bost said. “I’ll let you know when we’ll need you to testify as soon as it’s calendared.”

“Will Teddy’s mother and the boyfriend be there?” I asked.

“The proceedings are considered secret,” she said. “The defendants and their attorneys won’t be told what you said, or even
that you testified. You won’t be cross-examined. The only people in the room with you will be myself and the grand jurors.”

“No judge?”

“Only very rarely, if there’s a procedural question. This isn’t a trial. I’m just asking the grand jury to decide whether
or not it’s
possible
the defendants might have committed a crime. If the answer is yes—a ‘true bill’—I have permission to prosecute the case.
The jurors draw up an indictment, listing the charges I’m allowed to file against the defendants.”

“Is the answer ever no?” I asked.

“I’ve never had that happen,” said Bost, “but we make a point of having a solid case before anything goes to a grand jury.
Waste of time, otherwise.”

“And you’re charging them both?” I asked.

“We like the boyfriend for it,” she said, “but the mother saw what was going on. She didn’t step in. From a legal standpoint,
that makes her equally responsible for her son’s death.”

“She was there?” I asked.

“When Teddy died?” replied Bost. “Yeah, she was in the room. She saw the whole thing.”

“And she didn’t try to stop it?”

Skwarecki nodded. “We’ve got her on video saying she didn’t lift a finger.”

“
Jesus,
” I said.

“But she’s got a
very
good lawyer,” said Bost. “Marty Hetzler. He’ll try to get the charges against her dropped.”

Skwarecki nodded again.

“Marty’s right across the room, in fact,” said Bost. “Over at that big table. Snappy dresser, white hair.”

I turned my head to check out the guy she’d described. He had on one of those striped shirts with white collar and cuffs,
a thick gold bar-pin making the knot of his tie pop. His blue suit was double-breasted and nipped at the waist, peaked lapels
sharp enough to inflict paper cuts.

The guy started laughing like he’d just heard the best joke in the world, head thrown back so a thick piece of blue-white
hair fell across his forehead.

When he threw his arm across the shoulders of the fellow diner on his left, in apparent appreciation, I flinched in my seat
and said, “Holy
shit
.”

Skwarecki said, “What, you know Marty?”

“I know Kyle,” I said. “The guy sitting right next to him.”