Mummers' Curse (12 page)

“What kind of problems?” Was this an oblique reference to the scarlet Emily Semow?

“Vincent must have said. Everybody knew. Jimmy lived fast. Loved risks and chances. On anything. The horses, Atlantic City. Hell, if he’d lived through the parade, he’d have had a wager on how much snow would be outside this time of day today. Sometimes, a man like that, he loses the bet. He wouldn’t take money from me to pay his debts. Said it wasn’t right, we weren’t married.”

“He used loan sharks?” I envisioned hatchet-faced men, knee-breakers, one loan too many.

She shook her head. “But what with getting married and everything, what I’m afraid of was that sometimes, if Jimmy wanted something real bad, like having people forget he owed them money, he could believe that they wished it just as much as he did. Like I said, he wasn’t a saint, but you had to like him all the same.”

“Do you know who loaned him money?”

Her answering shrug suggested everyone, anyone.

Charming Jimmy’s postmortem portrait grew darker by the moment. A compulsive gambler, he cheated his friends over money and cheated on his fiancée with another woman, but might be marrying her because she could pay his gambling debts. What a prize. I wondered if Dolores, knowing all that, wasn’t a little relieved to be freed from this marriage. “Are you saying a friend killed him? Do you know who?”

Dolores sniffled. “Talk about jumping to conclusions! Who said anything except that nobody would have wanted to hurt him that way? I loved him,” she said mournfully. “He was supposed to be the father of my children.”

That seemed an ill-advised description, given that he was reported to be the father of Emily Semow’s expected child. “Doesn’t that make you even more eager to know who did such a—”

“Yeah, well I’ll read it in the papers. I’m not saying another word. You’re pretending to care. You’re interested in your story. In the money you can make out of us.”

“I’m interested in the truth. If Vincent left the parade the way he says, it was because he was trying to find
you
, not me.”

“Says who?”

“Vincent.”

“Get outta here!” She’d told me to leave as soon as she’d seen me, but this time the words expressed incredulity. I thought.

“I gather you used to date and maybe something was starting up again?”

“Get outta here!” she said again. “Jimmy Pat and me, we were getting married in two weeks.”

An oven timer dinged. The food troops would march in any second now. I stood up.

“You’re saying Vincent’s still carrying a torch for me?” Dolores’s voice was foggy, bemused. She waved her hand dismissively. “Ahhh…that’s crazy.” But she sounded lighter, and definitely interested. Fickle, Vincent had called her. He seemed right on the mark. “Nah,” she said, continuing her internal debate. “That’s too crazy. Get outta here.”

This “get out of here” was the charm. With a few apologies, and fewer regrets, I got out of there.

Seven

TWO P.M. IN SOUTH PHILLY. I’D TAKEN A BUS TO THIRD and was waiting to transfer to the connecting bus home, but even though I could state my locale, where, really, was I?

“Hey, lady, you nowhere.”

I wheeled around to see who had read my mind and answered it. An unshaven man in a raveling knit cap and layers of jackets and shirts, none of which looked warm enough to protect him, grimaced. “Nowhere?” he repeated, this time as a question.

“Excuse me?”

“The recycling center, like I said. Know where it is, lady? Do. You. Know. Where?” He punched the side of one of his plastic bags and I heard a metallic clinking.

I smiled my relief. Know where. Unfortunately, I had no idea where the recycling center might be. In fact, I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure either metaphorically or literally where I was. I looked toward the corner. Christian Street. Now I knew my geography, but that didn’t help the man. He must have known how useless I’d be because he shuffled off.

I watched the retreating figure. Welcome to the Nineties, to a modern refinement of Santa-as-homeless with trash bags full of recyclables. Then I turned back toward the bus stand. But the corner signs for Third and Christian Streets hung in the gray-blue air as if outlined. Something about that location, something I’d stored away besides the fact that a north-running bus was available. But what? I looked around, trying to see if memory or recognition would be on the tape this time.

The know-where man had not given up his quest. As I watched, he stopped two men. They listened as he asked his question and shook his bag of soda cans, shook their heads, waved him aside dismissively—although one of them handed him money first. The backs of their leather jackets had writing embroidered on them.

The Grassi brothers. Why were they here, twenty-thirty blocks from home? Were they following me? Or did it have something to do with why I was supposed to remember this area?

I was losing it. They could be here for a million reasons. This was their greater neighborhood and they’d had some kind of appointment. The real question was—why was I here?

Because…Christian Street. Between Second and Third. This time, I heard Stel’s voice at the beauty parlor saying that Emily Semow’s card store was nearby and always open. I glanced at my watch and confirmed that the odds of Mackenzie’s being back in the loft were slim. A case of serendipity, so a small detour wouldn’t make any difference, except, perhaps, to yield something tangible. Like whether or not Jimmy Pat really had another woman plus a Jimmy Pat, Junior, on the way, although I wasn’t sure how I could broach a subject of such delicacy.

I walked across the street to where Semow Stationery settled grayly and unimpressively between a dog groomer and a beauty supply shop. The Grassi brothers had stopped a few paces down and were watching me.

Nothing odd about any of this, I reminded myself. Maybe they’d needed thank you for your kind sentiments at our time of loss cards.

“Déjà vu all over again,” George Grassi said. “You were just at my house, and now you’re…”

“Shopping.”

“For what?” Stephen asked. “Us? More facts for your article? That really burns me. Leave us alone, would you?”

“I had no idea you’d be here,” I said. “I’m looking for school supplies.”

“Why here? You’re not from the neighborhood, why here?”

“I heard this store was open a lot, like today.” He nodded and scowled, then leaned closer. “It’s not going to do you any good.”

“What isn’t?”

George tugged at his sleeve and, with one last frown, Stephen turned and walked away with his brother, but he kept swiveling to watch me.

When I opened the door, an old-fashioned bell rang in the back of the shop. However, no summons had been necessary. A tall, blue-eyed, black-haired young woman stood arranging a display of half-priced Christmas cards. She turned and appraised me. She had striking features that were probably odd and teaseable in school, but stunning now. “Help you?” she asked as I stood aimlessly near the register. She wore a black skinny-ribbed T-shirt, a black leather skirt, black tights, and clunky high-heeled black sneakers. Her hair was cut in shaggy points, so that her head looked not unlike a dark-rimmed ornament.

The ensemble could have been a form of mourning attire, or simply standard-issue black clothing worn to show you were a unique and sophisticated individual.

I remembered that I should look like a customer. “Um,” I said, biding time while I waited to hear what I was going to say. “I’m looking for…three-by-five cards.”

She sighed.

I had failed to say the secret word. Three-by-fives weren’t it, weren’t enough to brighten her day. She listlessly nodded toward a counter. This was one sad cookie. “White, yellow, green, pink, blue, lined, unlined, three-by-five, five-by-eight, whatever you want,” she recited with no animation, for which I couldn’t blame her. “Also, over with the recipe boxes we have some that say ‘From the kitchen of.’”

I smiled and shook my head. “No thanks.”

“Or
bon appétit.
Those, too.”

I hated disappointing her.

“Not using them for recipes?” she asked.

“Sorry.”

“What then? Writing a term paper?” She laughed, then stifled it. “Didn’t mean to sound like I thought it was funny if you were still in school, or anything. People should do what they want to.”

I shoved my mittens into my purse and selected a packet of assorted colors. It was one of the brightest objects in the store, which seemed shrouded by a veil. Maybe it was only the dark day, inadequate lighting. “I’m researching an article.” I loved saying that much more than I loved doing the work.

“You’re a writer?”

“Freelancer.” It wasn’t a lie. I was an inept, inadequate, and completely unsuccessful freelancer, but she hadn’t asked for my résumé or profile. “It’s all an excuse to let me go crazy in stationery stores,” I added. That part was probably true.

“So go crazy,” she said. “I could use the business.”

I paused in front of the discounted Christmas cards. It would be smart and economical to stock up now, as the hand-printed sign advised. I would love to be a person who buys at the post-Christmas sales and has a closet filled with wrapped and carefully selected gifts and cards months in advance. But I am always broke in January. Besides, I’d worry that the catchy item I bought would be further discounted or recalled by December. Or that since it was so perfect and such a good buy, the giftee would have already gotten it for himself. Still, I paused at the half-priced card rack.

Upholding a great local retail tradition, the store’s heat register was set on
equatorial
. No concessions to what customers would be wearing when they entered. In summer, the systems are equally irrational, air-conditioning set on
arctic
. Temperate, indeed.

I unbuttoned my coat, loosened my muffler, pulled off my knit hat. Winter in a nutshell: taking off and putting on insulation.

“Here,” the girl said. “Toss it on that chair. I tell my dad all the time it’s too hot in here, but he never listens.”

So she was Emily or at least, a Semow. Who else’s father would be in control of the thermostat? I put my things down—everything—nearly was tempted to pull off my lined boots and pad around in my socks.

I skimmed through sparkle-sprinkled Christmas kitties, cunning vignettes on the daily lives of grinning elves in curly-toed shoes, a handful of talking reindeer, and glimpses into the private life of Mr. and Mrs. Claus. I had never suspected how frisky Santa became once his annual workday was over.

“You’re not from the neighborhood,” she said.

I shook my head. Neighborhood seemed a quaint, old-fashioned, but important construct in these parts. Other parts of the city—like mine—were areas. This was a neighborhood.

“Didn’t think you looked familiar.”

I controlled another urge to apologize.

She hummed tunelessly while she did whatever it was with the price stickers, then she spoke again. “So who do you write for? Like magazines?”

“Like magazines,” I agreed, relocating to the always-alluring pen display and trying out one, then another, on the little pad of paper provided. With the fifth try, I thought that I had found the perfect writing implement. It wrote so smoothly, felt so right in my hand, that surely ideas would transfer themselves directly from my brain to the page, and I would finish my article and write countless more and be rich and happy forever. Scribble, scribble. Amanda Pepper. A.P. Associated Press and Me. Ms. Mandy. Smooth and easy.

“Emily!” a voice from the back grumbled loudly. “I’m hungry, damn it!”

“In a minute!” she shouted.

So she was, indeed, Emily Semow.

“Do they pay a lot?” she asked me.

“Magazines? It varies.” I spoke from the depths of ignorance while I doodled loops and experimented with signatures. “Some magazines and tabloids, very well. Others…you know how it is.” I hoped she didn’t, because if she did, she could ask me specific questions and find out that I knew nothing. “Nice pen,” I said. Of that much I was positive.

“Damn it, Em, I don’t like to wait!”

‘Then get it yourself! It’s in the refrigerator.” She looked toward the back of the store, her mouth set and her eyes bleak. “He could reach it with one hand,” she said to me. “Customer!” she shouted. “Leave me alone!”

I tried to seem unaware of the rising tension level and focused instead on whether I wanted to stay with traditional black or make a breakthrough with blue-black or even, heretically, turquoise ink. Was the new year time for a new image? Would green composition corrections seem more benign and acceptable than those made with the traditional red?

“People like you, they ever buy people’s stories?” she asked while she sorted through keychains.

“I’m not a publisher.”

“I mean, buy what happened to somebody.”

“You mean to write it up?” Of course that’s what she meant, but I didn’t know. Tabloid TV and newspapers bought stories, but did freelancers? “It depends who they’re writing for,” I answered, hedging the issue.

“Supposing somebody had a story to sell
you
, for who you write for, would you be interested?”

“Me?” She didn’t have very high standards if she would talk to someone as tongue-tied and verbally limited as I was being.

“A good story. Stuff nobody in the world but me knows. What would something like that be worth?”

What to do? How to possibly keep up the pretense?

Bus tickets, three-by-fives, and the pen would wipe out my post-holiday discretionary funds. I couldn’t buy her story. Ever. “I’d have to…do research, get a better sense of what you mean,” I finally said. “Of whether a wide readership would be interested. Can you give me a hint?”

“Murder. That enough of a hint?”

“You didn’t commit one, did you?”

“Like I’d tell you, right?”

“Then you know about a murder.” I was practically whispering. “An unsolved murder? A wrongly solved one? An old one? A recent one?”

“All I said was I had a story. And this—even that—is off the record, right?”

If only I had a record to keep it off. I nodded. What did a real journalist do in this situation? “Is this like a… Jack the Ripper sort of thing? I’m…thinking of possible markets.”