She’d cried harder than he had.
Ike and Mike.
She used to tell him his ears were too big.
He used to tell her she had a big nose.
Eek, what a beak! Is that a nose or a hose?
She called him Mickey Mouse.
He called her Pinocchio.
He’d loved her to death.
He burst into sudden tears, and did not know for a moment whether he was crying for his dear Uncle Rudy or for all the dear dead Sundays he’d spent running around Grandma’s house with, his cousin Ida.
The front page of Tuesday morning’s Daily News blurted out the story in a single hurried breath:
The Post, riven by internal problems, carried a headline that was equally blunt:
Sarah saw the headlines when she picked up the Times at the newsstand on the Seventy-Seventh Street subway platform. On the ride downtown, she merely glanced at the Metro Section story about the death of some big-shot gangster who’d survived countless shootings only to die, ironically, of a heart attack. Which served him right, she thought, and turned the page.
When she got off the station at Sixtieth Street, she walked to the phone booth on the corner of Lex and dialed Andrew’s number. Standing on a mound of snow as she leaned into the receiver, she heard his familiar voice telling her the office would be closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. She waited for the tone, said, “Hi, it’s me. I hope nothing’s wrong.” Then she fished more change from her purse and dialed the number in Great Neck. There was no answer at all there.
The weekend’s heavy snowfall was beginning to melt. The sun was shining brightly. Tomorrow was St. Patrick’s Day, and spring would be here on Saturday. But she could only think she would not see Andrew this week.
Barney Levin called them at home that Wednesday evening, while she was making dinner.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” he said. “Did you go march?”
“No,” she said. “Did you?”
“I always march,” he said. “With the gays,” he added. “Have you got a minute?”
“If you want Michael, he isn’t home yet.”
“No, this is a question for you,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of checks here written to a woman named Maria Sanchez. Both of them for a hundred bucks even, one dated...”
“Yes, she’s a cleaning woman. Comes in twice a week. I pay her fifty for the day.”
“This something new, Sarah?”
“She started a few weeks ago. Why?”
“Did you withhold anything from those checks?”
“No. Was I supposed to?”
“Is she an illegal alien?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then don’t ask her. Pay her in cash from now on, and forget we ever had this conversation.”
“Wouldn’t that be breaking the law?” Sarah asked.
“Wouldn’t what be breaking the law?”
“Come on, Barney. Michael’s a DA. I can’t do anything criminal.”
“Then start deducting federal, state, and city withholding taxes, plus PICA. And make sure she’s covered for workmen’s comp, New York State unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, too. Either that, or fire her. Those are your choices.”
“Thanks. I’m so happy you called.”
“Who asked you to marry a DA?”
“Listen, Barney, while I have you...”
“Yeah?”
“What do you know about a company named Carter-Goldsmith Investments?”
“What company?”
“Carter-Goldsmith Investments.”
“Are they on the Big Board?”
“I have no idea.”
“What do you want to know about them?”
“Just how they’re rated, what they do, who the principals are, that sort of thing.”
“Thinking of investing with them?”
“Maybe.”
“Let me ask around.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you from school tomorrow.”
“Gee, can’t you give me till midnight tonight?” Barney asked.
“Friday, then,” she said. “Good night, Barney.
“Good night, Sarah. Say hello to Michael.”
“I will.”
Smiling, she put the phone back on the cradle.
While waiting for Andrew’s return from wherever he was, she’d decided to write a little poem for him. She had already looked up “Andrew” in the name book she’d bought before Mollie was born, and had discovered the name was from the Greek and that it meant “manly, valiant, and courageous” — no surprise at all. The nicknames for Andrew were Andy, Tandy, Dandy, and Drew, which sounded like a vaudeville team, but which had given her a lot to work with.
The name Farrell was from the Celtic, and it meant “the valorous one” — how did these people know he’d once jumped into the sea to save her daughter? On the other hand; Farrell was a variant form of “Farrar,” going all the way back to the Latin ferrains, which meant “a worker with iron,” or, more simply, “a blacksmith.”
She had already written the first stanza of her opus; now she wanted to do a second stanza that referred to his professional life. All by way of surprising him when he returned, whenever that might be.
As she checked the thermometer on the roast in the oven, she went over the first stanza again in her head:
... which was where she needed something about Carter-Goldsmith. She made a mental note to call Barney from the teachers’ lunchroom on Friday, and wondered for perhaps the fiftieth time today when Andrew would be back.
On Thursday morning, the Post and the News both carried stories of the big gangland funeral, complete with photos of obvious hoodlums carrying the coffin of their fallen leader. There were more flowers in view than at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. What was not in view was the face of the third pallbearer on the right, blocked from sight by the ornate black coffin itself.
The Times covered the funeral in its Metro Section, giving it no photographs, and very little space. Mollie scanned the story as she rode the bus uptown to a Hundred and Tenth Street, where she would transfer to the crosstown bus that would take her to Hanover. Apparently, there was speculation and concern about who would take control of what was now called the Faviola family, but which had once been known as the Tortocello family. The former boss of the Faviola family, a man named Anthony Faviola, was now in jail and the most recent boss, his brother, Rudy, had died of a heart attack this past Monday night. So who was to succeed to the throne?
Ahhh, such an earth-shattering question, Mollie thought.