There was the sound of something dropping onto the floor below, a rustle, a sigh, weary footfalls rising up the stairs. The door creaked open, a withered face appeared.
“Victor, he wants tea,” said Mrs. Kalakos.
Thalassa turned her head to me, stared with unalloyed hatred.
“He likes sugar with his tea,” said Mrs. Kalakos. “And those round cookies.”
“Really, I’m fine,” I said.
The face slipped away, the door creaked closed.
“She good girl. Alas, her tea, it is thin like her blood. She saves her tea bags from cup to cup, as if tea were gold. We still have tea from when Clinton was president. Ah, Clinton, he was part Greek, he didn’t know it, but I could tell.”
“What did Teddy do after the beating?”
“Teddy, he was such a beautiful boy. So clever. He came to me, asked for keys to my car. I knew what he wanted, and so I gave to him. That boy was Greek where it counted. Off they went into the night, even Joey with his arm in sling, the five of them with their blood hot and their baseball bats, off they went. And they took care of it, Victor. It didn’t even matter that he was wrong boy. Those animals from Oxford Circle, they not come round no more. The boys protected each other, you understand? Such bond survives the years.”
“And these were the guys who pulled off the theft?”
She patted my cheek. “You smart boy. You sure you don’t want to date my Thalassa?”
“No, ma’am. But this is what I don’t understand, Mrs. Kalakos. I heard it was a crack team of professional thieves that robbed the Randolph Trust, not five schmoes from the neighborhood. So how did they do it?”
“They were not simply five schmoes from neighborhood, Victor. They were four schmoes and Teddy. That is difference.”
Just then the door creaked open, and Thalassa, with gray body hunched and gray head bowed, brought in a tray. Mrs. Kalakos was right, the tea was weak, and musty, it tasted as old as Thalassa looked, but the cookies were surprisingly delicious. I was on my fourth cookie when my cell phone rang.
I stood up, slipped into the dark corner of the dark room, flipped it open. “Carl,” I said.
“You free tonight, mate?” said the unmistakable voice of Phil Skink.
I looked at Mrs. Kalakos, sitting up now, her pale face bowed toward a porcelain teacup, steam rising around her sunken eyes. “Sure,” I said. “I’m in a meeting, but it won’t last much longer. What’s up?”
“I gots someone I wants you to meet.”
My heart skipped a beat. I could feel myself blushing in the darkness. “Did you find her?” I said. “Did you find Chantal Adair?”
“That’s what I wants you to tell me.”
17
“Where are we going, Phil?” I said as I drove us down Spring Garden Street toward the eastern edge of the city.
“I just wants you to check someone out,” he said.
“Is it her?”
“Don’t know, does I? I put out the word, quietly like you asked, and this came back my way as a possibility. Things, they are not exactly as you’d expect in one way, and then” – he laughed – “in another way they’s exactly as you’d expect.”
“Did you take a picture? I might not want her to be the one, if you get my drift. Did I tell you I have a thing about mustaches? Big, thick mustaches? I don’t like them on women. I don’t like them on men either, actually, but on women they give me the creeps.”
“Look, mate, if she’s the one whose name you got scrawled on your chest, you’ll like the looks of her, don’t be worrying about that. But I gots some other pictures, too. You want to see them first?”
“Sure.”
“All righty,” he said. “Pull over there.”
I edged the car to the side of the road, stopped behind a parked van, put it in neutral and left the engine running. Skink turned on the overhead light and took an envelope out of his suit pocket.
“There was no Chantal Adairs listed for Philly, South Jersey, or Delaware,” he said, “but I found us a few C. Adairs, with no first name given. Usually an initial instead of a first name is a lady trying not to look like a lady in the book in case a predator is stalking, you got me? So I checked out thems that I could. Found one in Absecon, one in Horsham. Take a peek and see if a face rings a bell.”
He passed me over the first of the photographs. A color shot, a little grainy and taken from pretty far away. It wasn’t the clearest photograph, but right off I could tell that the woman in the picture was not whom I was looking for. She was older, much older, with steel gray hair that matched her walker.
“Is this a joke?” I said.
“Don’t know what you are into these days, mate, now, do I?”
“Who else?”
The next photograph was of a younger woman, hugely pregnant, holding a young child on her ample hip. She had a pretty face, though, despite her evident maternity, and I squinted to see if it was familiar.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I ever saw her before.”
“Don’t think so neither, since her name is Catherine.”
“Then what was the point of showing me the photograph?”
“I just wanted you to know they ain’t too many of these Chantal Adairs out there. So you won’t be sniffing up your nose at who we’re seeing tonight.” He switched off the light. “Let’s get a move on.”
I popped the car in gear, pulled out from behind the van, and continued heading east.
“What do you mean,” I said, “that things aren’t exactly like I would expect?”
“Well, her name ain’t exactly what you got printed there on your chest.”
“Then exactly why are we checking her out?”
“Because it’s close enough.”
“Close enough for what?”
“For you to tell me if she’s the one. Turn there.”
I turned. “What if I don’t remember her?”
“Then maybe she’ll remember you. Okay, take a right and then go under that bridge.”
“What’s that there?” I said, nodding toward a bright neon sign.
“Where we’re headed, mate. Pull in to the lot.”
The parking lot surrounded a one-story building wedged beneath a highway bridge. The lot held pickups and high-priced sedans, the building was painted black, the purple neon in the sign was blinking, alternately spelling out the name of the place in script and then showing a figure, a female figure, like the kind of thing you see on the mud flaps of a sixteen-wheeler. I stopped the car in the middle of the lot, felt my expectations deflate and my heart sicken. But I should never have been surprised. Whenever men head off into the limitless American night in search of true love, they more often than not end up at a strip joint.
“Club Lola?” I said, a tone of defeat in my voice.
“’At’s it, all right.”
“Isn’t this the place where that guy met the stripper he killed his wife for?”
“’At’s the one.”
“And I suppose this Chantal Adair is one of the dancers here.”
“’At’s what we’re here to find out.”
“What’s the point?” I said. “Of all the things I could have imagined for the tattoo on my chest, this is the absolute worst. What kind of loser gets drunk, ends up at a strip bar, falls in love with a stripper, and is determined to show her his undying devotion by tattooing her name on his chest?”
“We’ll find out tonight, won’t we?”
“Forget it. It’s no mystery how this story turns out.”
“You don’t want to know for sure?”
“I’ve seen enough already to know the whole thing is a crushing mistake.”
“If you give up now, mate, whenever you look in the mirror, you’ll always think the worst,” said Skink. “Not about the bird but about yourself. Park the car. Let’s find out what’s what.”
“You just want an evening’s entertainment.”
“That, too, yes, and on your dime, which makes it all the sweeter.”