“No, please. Stay here. Please.”
“Father, your flowers look so good!” chirps one of the women, grabbing Father Cassiotti by the elbow. “Look at them, Conchetta. So pretty!”
“It’s a sin!” adds a second, taking his other arm.
They surge forward like a rugby team, pound for pound outweighing the little priest, and engulf him in their enthusiasm. They sweep him to the church like a winning coach, and all I can see of him is his bony hand in the air, bearing its janitor’s key ring. I shout good-bye, and the key ring jingles back.
I decide to walk back to the office. It’ll clear my head, and it would be impossible to find a cab down here anyway. I realize that Father Cassiotti is right: I have to forgive myself. But I don’t know how, even so many years later. I head north toward the center of the city, leaving behind the blocks that measure my girlhood.
Once out of the neighborhood, I feel nervous again. The sun is white-hot, unseasonably so, and leaves me exposed on the bare sidewalks. My walk picks up to a run, and before I know it I’m hustling through the city blocks. I glance around for the dark sedan but keep moving, jogging past babies in strollers and teenagers hanging out on the corner.
I’m slowed by the busy lunchtime crowd at Pat’s, a popular cheese-steak stand across from a playground. I thread my way through the crowd; a couple of the men in line look at me curiously. My armholes are wet underneath my blazer and blotches itch on my chest. I’m about to cross the street, still going north, when I see the figures.
About fifty feet away, at the edge of the basketball court, two big men are arguing. A crowd of basketball players and truants collects around the pair. Even at this distance, something about the men looks familiar.
I freeze when I recognize them.
It’s Detective Lombardo. And Berkowitz.
23
Iduck behind a minivan parked on Federal Street and watch them through its sooty windows. The argument escalates as Berkowitz gestures wildly, almost out of control. Suddenly, he drives his fist into Lombardo’s cheek. Blood pours from the detective’s nose. He cups it in pain, staggering backward.
Berkowitz eyes the crowd uneasily, then stalks off the court. The onlookers applaud as he climbs into his black Mercedes sedan, parked illegally at the curb, and drives away. Lombardo shuffles off in the opposite direction, cradling his nose. The crowd boos loudly. “Pussy!” they shout. “Hit ’em back, you dumb fuck!”
I draw a breath. It feels like the first one in five minutes. What the hell is going on? What are they doing, having a fight in the middle of South Philly? I remember what Lombardo said after the memorial service-that Berkowitz was very interested in the investigation. Is the investigation what they were fighting about? What else could it be, if not something having to do with Brent’s death? And maybe even Mike’s?
I’m scared, and Father Cassiotti’s no help now. Apparently, neither are the police. I consider busting into Lombardo’s office and demanding an explanation, or busting into Berkowitz’s office and demanding an explanation, but who am I kidding? I’m not a gunslinger; I’m in way over my head. My first thought is to run, to get the hell out of Dodge, but where can I go? The only person I know who lives out of the city is Angie.
Angie!
In the convent, near Baltimore. The idea appeals to me immediately. I’ll bang on the convent doors, pound them until they let me in. I’ll say it’s a family emergency, which it is, and they’ll open the doors. They have to, they’re a convent. What could be safer than a convent?
I look around for a phone and spot one back at Pat’s. I walk over to it, trying not to break into a dead run in front of the noisy crowd of office workers and construction jocks. Almost as soon as I pick up the greasy receiver, a rangy black basketball player gets in line behind me to use it. Behind him comes a mailman. I reach Judy and tell her what I saw, shouting into the receiver over the crowd noise.
“Hepunched him?” Judy says. “What are they doing down there anyway? What areyou doing down there?”
The basketball player makes a pleading face for the phone, and I give him a one-minute sign.
“I’m leaving the city, Judy. For the night, anyway.”
“Where are you going?”
I can barely hear her. I put a finger in my free ear. “I was going to get the notes from Ned after lunch, but I can’t. Will you call him and get them?”
“Nedhas the notes? I was wondering where they were!”
“Keep them someplace safe, okay?”
The basketball player folds his hands in mock prayer.
“Judy, I have to go, somebody wants to use the phone. He’s begging already.”
“But where are you going to stay tonight? You can stay with me, you know that.”
An old man in a mesh cap that saysOLD FART gets in line for the phone behind the mailman.
“Thanks, but I got a better idea. Call you tomorrow.” I hang up.
“Thanks a lot,” the ballplayer says, tucking the basketball under his arm. “I got to call my girl. We had a fight, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“I think so.”
I push through the crowd, looking for a cab. One should be around soon; Pat’s is like a magnet. My blotches announce themselves with a vengeance. I worry about running into Lombardo, Berkowitz, or whoever’s following me. My head is spinning. I spot a yellow cab and jump in, slumping down all the way in the seat. Partly from exhaustion, partly from fear.
The cab driver is a streetwise manchild in a backwards Phillies cap. He eyes me warily over his shoulder. “Look, lady, I don’t want no trouble in my cab.”
“There won’t be. Please, I have to go to a garage at Twenty-second and Pine. My car’s there. Can we just go?”
He shakes his head. “You don’t look like the type to be running from the cops, but you’re sure runnin’ from somethin’.”
“I am. I’m running from…my boyfriend. We had a fight.”
He breaks into a knowing grin. “Man trouble.”
I nod. “We have to get out of here. Fast.”
“You got it, gorgeous.” He flips down the flag and guns the motor. He runs two lights as he zips up Twenty-second Street. At the same time, he manages to give me unsolicited advice on my love life, delivered to a rapper’s beat: Gotta make ’em beg for it, gotta make ’em want it, gotta make ’em show respect. We’re at the garage by the time he shifts into, “Gotta shop around.”
“Right. Listen, would you do me a favor, please? Just wait here for two minutes until you see me drive out?”
“Ain’t no way he coulda followed me, lady. I was bookin’.”
I hand him a tip the size of the fare.
“All right!” he says appreciatively.
“It’s a green BMW.”
“A BMW? I like it! Which one, the 325 or the 535?”
“The 2002, from before you were born. It’s lime green, you can’t miss it.” I get out of the cab.
“You gotta pick and choose, remember that now.”
In ten minutes, I’m making my way through the western part of the city to the Schuylkill Expressway. I almost have an accident from driving with one eye on the rearview mirror. No one appears to be following me, and when I pull onto the expressway I begin to breathe easier. The traffic is light, and I switch lanes a couple of times to see if anyone behind me does the same. It takes only a minute for me to realize that everybody else is switching lanes in a similarly haphazard way.
Which looks normal.
I hit warp speed in the car Mike lovingly called the Snotmobile and bust through the city limits like I’m breaking the sound barrier. After a time I satisfy myself that no one’s on my tail, and I feel freer, safer. Like I’m not trapped anymore, by the city and by whoever’s after me there. I roll down the window and snap on the radio. I recognize the husky bass voice as George Michael’s, in the middle of “Father Figure.” I love that song. I turn it louder.