Madman's Thirst (16 page)

CHAPTER 19 – THE GADOMSKI BOY

The next morning Scarne woke up
with a hangover and feeling out of sorts. They had stayed late at Arachne’s
apartment and Scarne had become a bit annoyed at how much attention their host
paid to Emma. A couple of times when Scarne was with other guests or at the bar
he returned to find Arachne’s arm draped casually around her waist. While he
realized that his relationship with Emma was non-committal, he couldn’t help
but feel irked. She had tried to smooth his ruffled feathers on the way home
but, using her daughter as an excuse, didn’t invite him in.   

Scarne put on a pot of coffee, set
the timer, and then went down to the his building’s basement gym, which looked
like something Rocky Balboa would train in: old-style weight benches and
barbells, jump ropes, dirty floor mats, stretching pulleys attached to boards
on the wall, even a heavy punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Some of the
residents, used to upscale health clubs, wouldn’t be caught dead with their
$400 track suits in the room, with its odors of sweat, mold and liniment vying
for primacy. Scarne, wearing $20 Old Navy  shorts and an old Providence College
sweatshirt with coffee stains, loved the place. He never even signed the petition
for a new facility, now moot with the impending brick façade assessment.

Scarne emerged from the room 45
minutes later sweating and smelling musty but feeling human again. Back in his
apartment he poured himself coffee and checked in with Evelyn at his office while
he made bacon and eggs. Then, after a long shower, he called the two people
named Gadomski that Evelyn had turned up on Staten Island.

He first tried Paulina Godomski,
who lived in Castleton Corners. The result was a fractured greeting from an old
woman obviously unsure of how to use the device. He thought about leaving a
message asking if she had a son who was a hit man, but thought better of it and
just left his cell number.

The other listing was for a Dr.
Jack Gadomski, a vascular surgeon in Great Kills. His office said he was making
hospital rounds. When would the good doctor be back? Sometime in the afternoon
but he was fully booked. His next free appointment was in two weeks. Was the
problem serious? Scarne said he had weakness in his left side, his right eye
was twitching and he kept drooling on his tie. The receptionist suggested that
he go to the nearest emergency room. Scarne thanked her, slurring his words for
effect and hung up. He hoped the woman wouldn’t recognize his voice when he
showed up unannounced.

He then opened his laptop and did
a quick search for “Gadomski’s Bakery” on Staten Island. He was almost
immediately redirected to a website called
Staten Island’s Halcyon Days,
which
broke down the borough by townships and featured scores of now-defunct
attractions, restaurants, churches, schools, lighthouses, hotels, movie
theaters and other businesses. Each had one or two lines of copy describing its
place in the borough’s history. Some were accompanied by grainy black-and-white
photos. There was no photo of Gadomski’s, only a street address on Victory
Boulevard in Travis, and the notation that the bakery, “a family-owned local
favorite that opened in 1919” closed in 1970.

Scarne decided to head to Staten
Island again to check out the neighborhood where Gadomski’s Bakery had once
been. With round-trip bridge tolls to the borough now in the $14 range, he was
considering just moving there to save money.

An hour later he found the store
that had once housed the bakery. It was now a salon called “Essence of Nails.” Inside,
six women were sitting with their feet in tubs of water, being tended to by
three Vietnamese women. Another Vietnamese, presumably the owner, came over to
him and asked if he wanted a “mani-pedi.” When he declined she said, “More men
are coming in all the time, you should try. We have special, $35 for both.”

When he explained the reason for
his visit, she looked disappointed but politely answered his questions. She had
never heard of Gadomski’s Bakery. She bought the shop from the previous owner,
who ran a small toy store. Before that, she believed, it was a candy store. She
turned to her clientele and  said, “Any you ladies remember a Gabonski baker?”

“You mean Gadomski,” a woman in
the middle seat said.

“That’s right,” Scarne said,
walking over to her.

She was old, verging on ancient,
and he tried not to look at her wrinkled and blue-blotched feet. A worker was
gently massaging the gnarled toes on one of them.

“You’re a detective,” she said.

“Yes, I am, ma’am. Private. How did
you know?”

“I can tell. My husband and son were
on the force. Both my grandkids, too. Brooklyn and Queens. Girl and boy. Both
sergeants.”

“That’s wonderful,” Scarne said.
“So, you remember the Gadomski’s?”

“Yes, nice people. We’re Italian
and got most of our baked goods from Alfonso’s, but for rolls and donuts on
Sunday morning you couldn’t beat old man Gadomski. Do private detectives make
good money?”

“Sometimes,” Scarne said, thinking
about the tolls.

“Where’s your office, Staten
Island?”

“No, Manhattan.”

“Good money,” the lady in the next
seat chimed in.

“Maybe when my grandkids retire,
they can go private,” the old woman said. “You got a card?”

Scarne gave her one.

“Rockefeller Center,” she said to
the other ladies, holding the card up. “Real good money.”

“Who’s he?” It was one of the
other women down the line. “A private eye,” another one answered. “What’s going
on,” a third said.

Scarne knew things would shortly
get out of hand, or foot, as the case might be.

“Do you know if any of the family
is still around?”

“Old man Gadomski and his wife
passed some time ago,” the old lady said.

“Do you happen to know what the
wife’s maiden name was?’

“Oh, Lord. I used to. Something
Italian. I’m Irish, so they all sound alike to me. It was a common Italian name
though. Started with an ‘M’ I think.”

That narrowed it down to about a
thousand families on Staten Island, Scarne knew.

“Any children?”

 “They had a son. Crazy kid. Used
to hang around with my boy. Both were always getting into trouble. Not that my Mario
was an angel mind you. But he straightened out once he went on the force.”

“What about the Gadomski boy,”
Scarne said, his hopes rising. “What happened to him?’

 “He used to work in the bakery,
you know, after school. But he wanted no part of taking over the business. Too
tough. Old man Gadomski was up at 3 A.M. in the morning. Got to give it to the
Polacks. Hard workers. That’s when the kid came in sometimes. I know his father
was disappointed. There were no other children. I guess that’s why he had to
sell the business. Too bad. Nice man. Always sent us nice cakes for the
holidays, because our boys were pals, you know.”

“I don’t suppose you know where
the son is now.” Scarne said.

“Oh, sure.” Scarne couldn’t
believe his luck. “Jack straightened out, too. Went to medical school and
became a doctor. Got an office in Great Kills.  Does very well, I hear.”

   Five minutes later Scarne,
deflated and now carrying $30 worth of hand lotions that he hoped Evelyn could
use, managed to extricate himself from the salon. On his way to his car, he
cell phone chimed. It was Paulina Gadomski. No, she said, she didn’t know the
baking Gadomskis. Her husband worked at Proctor & Gamble in Port Ivory for
40 years before his heart attack.

“Just as well we not related to
the other Gadomskis. Frank is on a low-cholesterol diet.”

Wonderful, Scarne thought after
hanging up. It looked like the jelly donut clue wasn’t going anywhere. He
considered skipping his visit with Dr. Gadomski, whose only victims probably
sued for malpractice. But since he was on Staten Island anyway….

First, something to eat. He drove
up Victory Boulevard looking for an old-time diner he remembered near Jewett
Avenue. Not surprisingly, it was gone. He had passed a newer Greek diner and
turned around in resignation. He pulled into a parking lot that separated the
diner and a large office building next door. The grilled meat smells emanating
from the diner had all but eliminated his resignation and he was about to walk
in when the Verizon sign on the other building jarred his memory. He
temporarily shelved his thoughts of soulvlaki.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

The pretty young woman at the
reception desk had the bright-eyed look and chirpy voice of someone in their
first job.

“This was the old New York
Telephone Company building,” Scarne said.

“I believe so,” she said. “I mean,
we used to be New York Telephone. Then Nynex, Then Bell Atlantic. Now Verizon.”

“Did you take telephone history in
school?”

She laughed.

“No. But we learn all about the
company in the Verizon training course.”

“First job?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Wild guess. But listen, since you
know so much about the company, would you happen to know where there might be
some old telephone directories stored? Going back, say, to the 1960’s.”

“Sure, in the museum.”

“Museum?”

“Well, that’s what we call it.
Actually, it’s just a kind of library or reference room of sorts. Most of our
files and stuff are all on computer now, but some people still want their phone
books, although I don’t know how long that will last. We don’t keep a lot of
books here, of course, just enough for walk-ins. I’m sure they have a lot more
in a warehouse somewhere. There’s a couple of hundred books here, most of them
from recent years. But they keep at least one or two copies of every book that
comes out, for historic value, I think. I know that the public relations people
sometimes bring some of the real old books to show kids at schools and things.
Only Staten Island editions, though. There’s probably other books in other
boroughs.”

“Is the room open to the public?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

Scarne took out his wallet and
opened it to his investigator’s license.

“Do you think it might be opened
for a good-looking private eye working a homicide case?”

Her eyes widened as she read it.
This was turning out to be an exciting job. Scarne didn’t want to tell her that
it was probably all downhill corporately from here. She picked up her phone,
presumably to call a higher up for permission. Instead, she surprised him.

“Su Su, can you cover for me for a
while. I have a V.I.P. to bring back.”

A moment later an young Asian
woman walked over from a back office and took the desk.

“Take your time,” she said as
Scarne and the girl walked away.

“V.I.P.?”

The girl laughed. They were
walking briskly down a long hall.

“Well, you are to me Mr. Scarne.
And more cute than good-looking, by the way.”

Now he was “cute” to girls of a
certain age, Scarne thought. But he was impressed that she’d taken the time to
remember his name from his license. And hadn’t called some vice president. He
suspected that perhaps she wasn’t destined for permanent reception desk duty or
the corporate treadmill.

“I feel I should know your name.”

“Chelsea,” she said as they
reached a door, which she opened and ushered him in. “Chelsea Hinton. Here we
are.”

 It was more or less a large,
windowless conference room with a long table flanked by metal bookshelves
containing telephone books. In one corner was a small desk with a laptop. Framed
covers of vintage telephone books were scattered around the room wherever there
was an open space along a wall. The shelved books were arranged in chronological
order, with the older ones easy to spot: there were fewer of each year and they
were a lot thinner. Scarne stopped at the oldest section and gingerly picked up
a weathered volume under a nameplate that said “NYTELCO-1929.”

“This is as far back as the
collection goes? I would have thought it went back to 1900 or earlier.”

“Staten Island only got its own
book in 1929,” Chelsea said. “Before that the numbers were part of a citywide
book. And before dial phones, most people just asked the operators to find
people.”

“We’ve come full circle,” Scarne
said. “I can speak a name into my cell phone and it will connect me.”

“What year are you looking for,”
Chelsea said. “Or who? You never said.”

“The who is anyone named
Gadomski.” He spelled it out. “And the years, just to be safe, are from 1950 to
1980.”

“Is that who was murdered?”

“No. But I’m hoping he can help me
out, if he’s still alive. It’s a very long shot.”

Scarne sat at the conference table
and the girl brought over books in batches of five. The editions from the 50’s
and 60’s had numbers that began with letters. She went over to the computer
desk, opened a drawer and brought back a small pad and a pencil.

“What do these letters stand for,”
he said, pointing at several numbers that began with YU and GI. “I can guess
that the other letters represent townships, like SA means Saint George and DO
means Dongan Hills.”

“Yukon and Gibraltar,” Chelsea
said. “Probably left over from the citywide books. “I think they’re cool.”

“You must have gotten a Master’s
Degree at telephone school,” he said.

It took Scarne only a few minutes
to go through the 31 books. There were very few Gadomskis other than the bakery
ones, who shared the same address as their business. Scarne wondered what it
must be like to live over a bakery. Can one ever get tired of the smell of
fresh-baked bread? When he was finished, he had only five names, numbers and
addresses on his pad.

“I’d have thought there would be
more,” Chelsea said. “Must be an uncommon name. You’re lucky it’s not Gallagher
or Gallo. Did you see how many of those there were?”