“How … dare I?” the salesman asked uncertainly. “Call my own manager?”
Sal glowered at him. “This is shocking! You, my good man, you are in charge here, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you—as you Americans say—trying to pass the buck?”
“I’m not, sir.”
“Do you have the information my client requested?”
Client?
Mr. Henry nodded. “But I need authorization to get the printouts.”
“I’m giving you authorization!”
“But I mean from my own management—”
“I am your management, my good man. I am your management’s management!”
Mr. Henry looked puzzled, rapidly discovering that Uncle Sal was a confusing person to be around. But this time it was paying off. “It will take at least a day to get that information.”
“Right as rain!” Sal said, morphing into Rex Harrison. On steroids.
“And my manager would have to approve it.”
Shit. I should have realized it. I couldn’t get the records this way, but I could subpoena them now that I knew they existed. Time to fold ’em. “Mr. Livemore, perhaps we should go and seek the proper authorization. We can obtain it today or tomorrow, then come back.”
“My word! How can you say that! And look at this man’s desk! It’s abdominal!”
Say what?
“This is a travesty!” Sal flipped inexplicably through the papers on Mr. Henry’s desk, scattering them in a corporate hissy fit. I think he was trying to create a diversion even though nobody was breaking for the perimeter, and I gathered he had seen too many old war movies. “A mockery!”
“Please, Mr. Livemore!” Mr. Henry yelped, watching in horror as all of his papers flopped onto the floor, until the only thing on his desktop was a black three-ring binder and a cup of cold tea. “Please, sir!”
“What kind of order is this? What must our customers think when they come here? Disorder! Catastrophe! In short you have a ghastly mess!”
Sal was segueing into Mary Poppins, but I didn’t have time to watch. I was intrigued by the salesman’s black binder, which held a stack of forms filled in in a hasty pencil. There was a blank for the customer’s name, address, and trade-in, and business cards had been stapled to the top right of the forms. As Mr. Henry bent over to pick up the papers, I read the top form upside-down. At the top of the form it said in a pretentious font: TEST-DRIVES.
“But I usually keep it neater than this,” Mr. Henry said apologetically, his arms full of slipping papers.
“I should hope so!” Sal said. “In England we keep everything neat and clean. The telephone booths are red, did you know that? They have windows. Clean windows!”
Mr. Henry nodded. “I saw. On a commercial.”
Undoubtedly the same commercial Sal had seen. The ersatz Mr. Livemore was ad-libbing dangerously, leaving Alistair Cooke territory and entering the Irwin Corey zone. I wanted to get out before he blew our cover completely, but the notebook nagged at me. “Is this a log of test-drives?” I asked.
Mr. Henry nodded.
“Do you go with the customers on the test-drives?”
“Not usually. Most of our customers take the car out alone.”
“Wot?” Sal exploded. “You just give a customer one of our Jaguars? You just let them drive away with it? As if it weren’t worth nothing?”
Mr. Henry looked like he was starting to wonder. If he read the newspapers, he could catch on any minute now. “We lend the car. Our clientele doesn’t need me riding along with them. We do ask for the customer’s driver’s license.”
“Do you make a copy of the license?”
Two papers fell from the salesman’s grasp. “I make a Xerox of it, then I throw it away after about a week.”
Hmm. “Is there a time limit on how long you let the customer test-drive the car?”
“I should hope there is!” Sal interrupted. “I should hope so, for your sake! I should report this to my posteriors in Coventry!”
Eeeeek.
Mr. Henry looked from Sal to me, and back again. “Well, not usually. We trust our customers. Some of them, our manager lets them have the car for the whole afternoon.”
“Shocking!” Sal said, and I shot him a warning glance.
“How long do you keep the log sheets for?”
“I hope they are disposed of right away!” said Sal the Major General. “And neatly! In the rubbish!”
“In fact, sir, I keep mine for six months,” Mr. Henry said.
“That’s an outrage! Disorder! Democracy! In short you will have a ghastly mess!”
Mr. Henry turned to me for succor. “But some people don’t buy right away, and I keep the addresses that I log in. They make a good mailing list. No one I’ve dealt with ever mentioned anything about the paint chipping, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Not exactly. What I was wondering was whether it were possible to commit murder on a test-drive. Patricia’s carriage house was only fifteen minutes from here. “Do you let the customer test-drive any model they wish, Mr. Henry?”
“If the one they want is available. Usually I lend them a demonstrator. Our most popular model, the XJS Coupe.”
“Is it black?”
“Yes.”
Bingo. Except that Fiske’s model was a Sovereign, so was Kate’s. “Do you let them test-drive a Sovereign?”
“The Daimler? No, we don’t usually have one on hand, they’re scarcer. They look the same as the XJS anyway from the outside.”
Boy oh boy. The jackpot.
“Well, I never!” Sal barked. “Never!” He was about to speak for the British Empire again, but I gave him the high sign when Mr. Henry bent over for more paper.
“Yes, Miss Jamesway?” he asked, not understanding. “Wot is it?”
Wot a whiz. You could draw a line across your throat and Sal would think you were talking necklaces. “Mr. Livemore, perhaps we should go. We can continue our investigation in Mahwah.”
“Ma-what?” Sal said, more Ringo Starr than anything else.
I jerked a thumb toward the Chippendale entrance and stopped short of saying ime-tay to am-scray.
Sal nodded and gave me a jaunty thumbs-up, game as any World War II doughboy. “All righty. Tally-ho! Pip pip.”
Pip pip?
Mr. Henry and I stared at him in stunned silence.
Later, we drove back toward the city with the convertible top down, the sun so low in the sky it reflected in the car’s outside mirrors. I was drafting a subpoena in my head for the dealership’s sales and test-drive records, but Sal wanted rave reviews. “Didn’t I do good?” he kept asking.
“Until you started chewing the scenery.”
“What?” Wind buffeted his thin gray hair and his Adam’s apple protruded like a figurehead. “What does that mean?”
“It means you did great. Terrific.”
He grinned so broadly that the silver edge of his eyetooth caught the sunlight. “It was like I was in the movies. It was like I was a movie star.”
“You sure were.”
“I was like Cary Grant or something!”
If he were still alive. “Yep.”
“Didja like what I did about his desk?”
“I liked what you did about the desk.”
“Didja like when I told him I was shocked?”
“I liked when you told him you were shocked.”
“He was gonna call and I stopped him!”
“You sure did. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” It was true, actually. “I mean it.”
Sal squinted against the wind. “Why did we have to leave?”
“Because we found out what we needed to know.”
“Oh.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, but he seemed to deflate visibly in his seat, like a child after all the birthday presents have been opened.
“You had fun, huh?”
&n
bsp; He nodded.
“Fun is good, Uncle Sal.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept squinting as the wind blew his wispy hair around.
“What do you do for fun, Unc?”
He thought for what seemed like a very long time. “I like music.”
“What kind of music? You a rap fan, MC Sal?”
“No, no.” He didn’t even smile.
“What then?”
“Big band. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. Like the old 950 Club.”
“What’s the 950 Club?”
“On the radio. In the afternoons.”
“Like now?”
“Yeh,” he said, without checking his watch. “They don’t have Ed Hurst no more, but they got the music.”
I turned on the radio and scanned until I reached the station. Even I recognized the song “Sing, Sing, Sing.” “That’s Benny Goodman, isn’t it?”
“Yeh.”
“I like this song.”
“Your mother, she liked it, too.”
Out of left field. “Did she like music?” I had no idea.
“Loved it.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
I wondered. “What else did she like?”
“She liked to dance. She never sat still. She liked to go, your mother.”
I guess. “That why she left, you think?”
He nodded again.
“Go where, though?”
“Anywhere. She liked action.”
“Action?”
“Attention, like.”
I considered this. A Canadian blonde among the dark Italian butchers, grocers, and bakers, like a yellow diamond on a coal pile. A woman who liked to go, married to a man who wanted only to stay. “She didn’t really fit in, did she?”
“Like a sore thumb.”
“She never would have stayed, would she?”
“Not for long. Vito was the only one who didn’t see it comin’.”
It hurt inside. For my father, then for me. “You don’t think I’m like her, do you?”
“Nah. You got dark hair.”
So he wasn’t Phil Donahue. Morrones weren’t known for their introspection. “I meant her personality, not her looks.”
“Nah.”
“Not even a little?” I almost hit a Saab in front of me for watching him, but Sal’s only reaction was to shake his head. “Uncle Sal?”
“Can you turn up the radio, Ree?”
I laughed. “Is this the end of the conversation, Unc?”
He nodded, then smiled. “She was a wise guy, too.”
Our highway entrance came up suddenly, City Line Avenue onto the Schuylkill Expressway, and I turned onto the on-ramp. I thought about pressing him on the subject, but let it go. It was the longest talk I’d ever had about my mother, and somehow it was enough. More words wouldn’t make it any clearer, or any different. It was up to me to figure out anyway, for myself.
“The radio, Ree?” Sal asked again.
“Sorry,” I said, and cranked the music way up. The clarinet and horns blasted in the wind as Benny Goodman hit the chorus and we hit the open road. At this hour, rush-hour traffic was going the other way. “You can at least catch the end of the song, huh?”
“Yeah. I like the end.” The wind was stronger now that we had picked up speed. I pressed the button to close my window. Sal fished in his jacket pocket and found the Ray-Ban aviators I’d bought him, then slipped them on like a flyboy.
“Lookin’ good, Uncle Sal,” I shouted over the drums.
“You know, Ree, I kinda liked bein’ a lawyer,” he shouted back. “Maybe we’ll do more lawyer stuff.”
Like cheating and lying and perpetrating fraud? “Whatever you say, Mr. Livemore.”
He paused. “Ree?”
“What?”
“Can’t you make this crate move any faster?”
I smiled. Uncle Sal liked to go, too. Everybody did, a little. “Hang on, handsome. Hang on.”
And he did.
Sing, sing, sing.
20
Tobin had chosen an upscale sidewalk restaurant on Main Street in Manayunk, a town along the Schuylkill River, on the outskirts of town. Twenty years ago, Main Street was a gritty strip of shoe and textile wholesalers that served as the backdrop for a hilly clumping of brick row houses. But Manayunk, like all of us, hippened up in the nineties, attracting an annual bicycle race to its hills, restaurants like this one, and countless boutiques vending black clothes. Now there were twelve-cylinder Mercedeses lining the street and ponytails who dressed like Tobin.
“I love it here,” he said as he dumped ketchup onto a ten-dollar cheeseburger and a mound of french fries. “I got a loft down the street, above the interior designer’s.”
“We’re too old for lofts.”
“Speak for yourself, teach.” He dug into his burger with abandon and didn’t seem to mind being on display despite his table manners. More than one woman, walking by, cruised his Nautilus-powered Armani. “So, this is quite a little murder investigation you’re running.”
“You approve? That means so much to me.”
“I knew it would. What’s next?”
“I go motorcycle shopping with Herman tomorrow. We try to find out who bought that blue BMW motorcycle.” I speared a salad composed of greens apparently picked from the shoulder of I-95. I should have asked what a mesclun salad was before I ordered this thing.
“You going with a kosher butcher, on a Saturday?”
“He’s not that kosher.”
He nodded. “Neither am I. So, let’s see, you got Herman the butcher, you got Cam with one arm, you got your little Uncle Sal. It’s a Dream Team.”
“Watch it, pal. That’s my family you’re talking about.”
“Interesting family.”
“You don’t get to define it, I do.”
He wolfed down a canoe of a french fry. “Back off, I’m not criticizing. It’s a big case and it’s just starting. You should be getting your team together, before trial. Take all the help you can get.”
“I am.”
“Except mine.”
I considered this. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I didn’t ask you to dinner to help you. I asked you to dinner to find out if you’re gonna marry Richie Rich.”
“Who?”
“That slice of white bread you bring to the Christmas party. I heard you live with him.”
I can’t say it took me aback, given his reputation, but I wasn’t prepared for it before the crème brûlée. “You’ll explain to me why this is any of your business.”
“I’m your partner.”
“So are thirty-five other people.”
“And they’re all talking about you behind your back. Is she really gonna marry the judge’s son? They don’t think you can do any better, but I do.”
I guessed from his smirk he was kidding. “You defend me from vicious gossip?”
“At every turn.”
“But then again, you eat Sno-caps for lunch.”
He scarfed down another french fry. “So?”
“So what?”
“So you’re not engaged or you’d have a ring.”
I felt a twinge. “Not engaged.”
“Not only are you not engaged, you’re fighting with him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you ignored him at the preliminary hearing and he spent the whole fucking time trying to get your attention.”
I hadn’t noticed. “He did not.”
“And I hear you been together forever.” He sucked ketchup from a finger. “So I’m thinking either Richie Rich won’t marry you or you won’t marry him. And since it’s impossible for me to believe a man won’t marry you, there’s only one thing I want to know.”
Christ. “My favorite color is red, but I won’t tell you my age or weight.”
He looked at me directly. “What’s holding you back?”
“You’re right, it’s silly o
f me. Sexist, even. I’m thirty-two years old.” Roughly.
“You avoid commitment, like all the other girls?”
“All right, I’ll tell you. I weigh a hundred and five pounds.” Or would, if I worked out.
“Or maybe you don’t love him enough?”
Ouch. Maybe I do. “You’re not getting the message, Tobin. This is none of your business.”
“You want to tell me anyway?”
“Why should I?”
“Because despite the way I look or the way I act with my so-called partners, or the shit you’ve heard about me, I’m a pretty decent guy. And I’m very attracted to you.”
I avoided his dark gaze and watched the candle on the table flicker in its frosted glass. His words were having some effect; my female ego must’ve been bruised more than I thought. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
“But you are having it.”
“No, I’m not.” I looked away, but the people on the street were walking so close to our table they could see the ragweed in my entree. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”
“You’re telling me this is an arms’-length dinner?”
“Exactly.”
“Professional colleagues? Not even friends? Like in high school, we’re both in chess club or some such shit?”
“You got it.”
“Wonderful.” He drained the beer from its green bottle and looked around for the waitress. “I need another beer.”
“You had three already. I hope you’re walking home.”
“They’re Clausthalers, Mom.”
“What’s that?”
“Denial beer. Nonalcoholic, like me. It was not always thus.”
I hadn’t known. “Really?”
“Really.” He gave up on the waitress and faced me. He suddenly looked tired, which made him look more human, worn in. “So, what’s the status of the murder investigation so far?”
“I have some suspicions, but more questions than anything else. Nothing really logical.”
“Murder is never logical. It’s emotional.”
“But you can use logic to solve it.”
“No, you can’t. To think like a killer you have to think emotionally. Murder is reactive, an emotional reaction to something. You have to figure out what set it off.”
I remembered Paul, his confidence in deductive reasoning. “How do you know this, Tobin? The guys you defended were lowlifes. They committed murder on drugs or while they were drinking, right?”