I decided to eat at the counter like I’d done when I was a little kid and only the grownups sat at the tables in the back. Besides that, I liked watching Geno make the pies. He was so expert at it, and it seemed so effortless for him. I think one of the things in life I enjoyed most was watching people who were good with their hands. When Geno tossed and twirled the flattened dough in the air, he wasn’t showy about it like some pizza makers. He just made it look so easy, the way some outfielders can track down fly balls without seeming to try. I was halfway through my second slice when he finished making the pie and slid it into the oven. Then, just to make conversation, I asked, “What happened to Jimmy, man? He looks like he had a fight with a box of razor blades and lost.”
Geno smiled and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, he’s no lookin’ so good. He smacked his car up real bad. Had a crash wid a big truck.”
“Where, on the Gowanus?”
“Nah, someplace in Pennsylvania somewheres.”
For the second time that day I got lightheaded, but this time it wasn’t from watching a bug crawl out of dead man’s nose. “You know where in Pennsylvania?”
“I don’t know, somewheres in the mountains someplace. You know, it’s a funny t’ing, Moe.”
“What?”
“The last time you was in here, that night a few days ago, Tony got a phone call. Remember?”
“Yeah, what about it, Geno?”
“It was some cop in Pennsylvania callin’ to tell Tony about Jimmy’s accident. He had to go get Jimmy from the hospital. Hey, Moe, whatsamatta? You don’t like my pizza no more?”
At first, I didn’t say anything at all. But Geno was right: the pizza had turned to sawdust in my mouth. When I realized that it was Jimmy Ding Dong who’d tried to run me off the road that night I was coming home from visiting Samantha’s grave, I lost my appetite. Truth was, I was suddenly nauseous and very close to panic. It was one thing to have escaped from Susan Kasten and her band of radical idiots. It was something else to have just missed getting my bell rung by Jimmy Ding Dong. What I was trying to figure out was why Tony P — Jimmy never acted without Tony’s say-so — should want me dead? More importantly, I wondered if I was still on his hit list.
“Moe!” Geno shouted.
“No, the pizza’s great. It’s me. I don’t feel so good. I gotta go.”
“Hey, Moe,” Geno called after me.
“What is it?”
“Not for nothin’, but the pizza’s not free.”
“Right,” I said with all the conviction of a zombie and threw a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Listen, Geno, do me a favor, okay? Don’t tell Tony or Jimmy we talked about what happened in Pennsylvania.”
Geno had been around long enough to understand. “Sure, Moe. Far as I know, you wasn’t even here today.”
I walked out of the shop without collecting my change. What did the walking dead need with money, anyway?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
My brother was at the desk doing his weekly sales reports when I walked into our bedroom. I didn’t even try to sneak the shearling jacket past him. I think I would have preferred him killing me and just getting it over with, but he must’ve seen the look on my face.
“What’s wrong with you, little brother? You’re white as a ghost.”
Ghost! If you only knew. “I’m sorry about borrowing the jacket, but — ”
“I didn’t ask you about the jacket. I asked you what was wrong. Is it Mindy?”
I choked on a laugh. “She’s the least of it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If I even tried to explain it, it would blow your mind,” I said, brushing off the jacket and placing it back on its hanger. I pulled the plastic bag down over the jacket and hung it back in its place.
“Try me.”
“Oh, and I borrowed your Chuck Taylors too.” I lifted up my left foot to show him.
He jumped out of his seat and grabbed me by the shoulders. “What’s wrong, Moe? You’re not making any sense.”
“I’ve gotten myself into something that I can’t get out of.”
“Drugs?”
“Nothing like that, I swear. I’m not even sure what it is, or how I got into it.”
“What?” he asked, relaxing his grip on my shoulders. “Does it have to do with the cop that was here today?”
“He’s a detective.”
“I don’t care if he’s Attila the Hun, for chrissakes. Does it have anything to do with him?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure,” I said, my mind racing, the rest of me numb with fear.
Aaron let go of me completely and pulled a suitcase out from under his bed. “Does it have anything to do with this? I found it in the trunk of my car last night.”
At first it didn’t register. Then I remembered. It was Samantha’s suitcase, the one that I’d pulled out of her landlady’s attic. I’d put it in the Tempest’s trunk the night Susan Kasten and her Halloween-masked friends had snatched me off the street. In the whirl of events that followed, I’d completely forgotten about it.
“I don’t know, Aaron. Maybe.”
“What the fuck do you know?”
“I know that almost everything I thought I knew, about everyone I thought I knew it about, was wrong.”
“Well, that clears it all up,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
I grabbed the suitcase and hoisted it onto my bed. “Let’s open this up. Maybe you better get a butter knife in case it’s locked.”
Butter knives are the Brooklyn Jewish take on Swiss Army knives. Between the five of us in my family, we’d used butter knives to do everything short of open heart surgery. It showed. All of our butter knives had blunted or twisted tips from being used as letter openers, screwdrivers, lock picks, or pry bars. Hell, sometimes we even used them to spread butter. Aaron, always the practical one of us, suggested I try the locks before he went to the kitchen. Smart man. Click. Click. Both latches snapped open when I pushed the two rectangular tabs to the side with my thumbs. My heart thumping with anticipation, I raised the case’s lid.
My heart sank in disappointment when I saw that the case contained nothing more than a cheerleader’s skirt and sweater from Koblenz High, a graduation tassel, programs from school plays, a yearbook, and some other odds and ends. But I wasn’t going to give up just yet. I removed it all from the case. Nothing. That is, nothing that did more than make me wonder about Samantha as a younger girl.
“Shit!”
“Not so fast, little brother,” Aaron said, pushing me aside. “007 would be disappointed in you.” He ran the flats of his hands along the faded, satiny interior lining of the suitcase. Then he pulled back the pocket of the same material on the underside of the case’s lid. He stopped, his eyes lighting up. He grabbed my hand and placed it inside the pocket. “Feel that?” he asked.
“Yeah, there’s something between the lining and the lid.”
Aaron curled his right hand around the loosest part of the lining and gave it a sharp yank. The material, old and faded, tore away from the glue without much of a fight. There, taped to the underside of the lid, were two large brown envelopes. I carefully peeled away the tape and held the envelopes in my hands. I was surprised at just how heavy they were.
“Do you think the envelopes are Samantha’s?” Aaron asked.
“Probably. Look at the rest of the bag. It’s all beat up. The lining is saggy and faded, but the tape is fresh and unyellowed, not brittle like old tape would be.”
“One way to find out for sure.”
The flaps on the envelopes were held closed by the little spread wings of metal clasps. I knew Aaron was right, that opening the envelopes would tell us about who had concealed them, but I hesitated. I wondered if I shouldn’t just put them back inside the suitcase and ship it to Sam’s parents.
Aaron shouted, “Open them!”
I suppose if Sam had died under normal circumstances and if my world hadn’t been turned upside down just lately, I’d have kept them closed and mailed them to her parents. But Sam hadn’t died a normal death, and with me on Jimmy Ding Dong’s to-do list, I had to see what was inside the envelopes.