“Is Margaret home?”
“She’s not around. Who are you?” he asked, but without guile.
“Moe Prager. I’m-”
“Sure, sure, Moe. I heard all about you. You were friends with Marge’s first husband. Come in. Come in.” I stepped inside. The interior of the house was as clean and tidy as the outside. “Frank Spinelli,” he said, offering me a thick hand. I took it. Had the grip of a working man, but the skin of a retiree. His accent was Bronx Italian, maybe with a taste of the old country mixed in.
“Pleasure to meet you, Frank.”
“Same here. Glad for the company. Gave up the pizzeria a few years back, but I can’t get used to this leisure thing. I tried golf a little bit, but I figured if I wanted to suffer so much, I’d just stick pins in my eyes. I’m home so much, sometimes I think I make Marge a little ubotz, crazy, you know?”
I liked this guy. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“For almost forty years I’m working twelve-hour days, and then this beautiful young woman walks into my shop and she takes my heart. She come in for calzone and winds up with a husband. Life is crazy, no? Hey, I’m being rude. You wanna drink? A little homemade red?”
“Sure, but only with some ice and lemon slices.”
That stopped Frank Spinelli in his tracks. “Hey, who taught you how to drink homemade like a guinea?”
Rico Tripoli. “Another ex-cop. A friend of Larry and me.”
“Come on in the kitchen.”
Frank Spinelli stood at the island with two jam jars filled with ice cubes and lemon wedges. He poured the red wine into the jars from a big jug. He corked the jug and slid a jar my way.
“Salude! ”
“Salude! ”
“So, Moe, you know your friend Larry, he really hurt Marge.”
“I know, Frank.”
“Why did he do that? Marge is a beautiful woman, a good woman.”
“The best. But Larry’s loss was your gain, right?”
For the first time since I stepped inside the house, Frank stopped smiling.
“Marge, she loves me, but she never loves me like Larry. I knew that when I married her. That is a once in your life thing, the way she loved Larry. Me, I’m a chubby old wop from the Bronx who respects a woman, who knows how to treat her right, but I never fool myself. My poppa,” Frank said, crossing himself, “he always said the only real fools were people who tricked themselves. I’m no fool, Moe.”
“No, Frank, I don’t suppose you are.”
“So why you wanna talk to Marge, you don’t mind me asking?”
“About Larry. Something was going on there. I knew Larry was an ambitious bastard, and he could do some incredibly cold and calculating things, but suicide. .”
“Marge, too. She don’t understand.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to her. Maybe she knows something she isn’t aware of. You know, something that happened a long time ago.”
“Sure. Sure. Makes sense.”
We went out to their back deck and stood in silence, drinking our wine and watching the cardinals and robins darting from branch to branch. Before I left, Frank promised he would have Margaret call me. We shook hands and said our goodbyes, but Frank wasn’t quite finished. With the front door nearly closed behind me, I could hear Frank mutter, “Why did he hurt her like that?”
It was a good question. Larry seemed to have left a lot of those behind.
I made one more stop on my way back to Brooklyn. I pulled off the L.I.E. at Queens Boulevard and drove into Rego Park. Mandrake Towers was a ten-unit apartment building complex. The buildings were red brick boxes that were as homey as an off-ramp and as cozy as a prison cell, but I wasn’t apartment shopping, thank God!
The security office was in the basement of Building 5. Although the incinerator had been replaced years ago by a garbage compactor, the stink of the fire and ash remained. Didn’t matter how many coats of fresh paint were laid over the cinder block walls, it seemed the odor was there to stay. Maybe it was in my head. My friend Israel Roth, forty-five years removed from the nightmare of Auschwitz, says he can still smell burning flesh in pure mountain air. He told me once, “There’s no forgetting some things. Some things, Mr. Moe, demand to be remembered.”
Who was I to disagree?
The security office was unchanged since the first time I’d seen it in 1983, but the man behind the desk had grown a little grayer, a little thicker around the gut. He no longer wore a trooper’s hat and there were now shiny captain’s bars on the collar of his khaki shirt.
“Shit!” he said looking up from his book. “Security sure do suck in this place they let broken-down old white people like you in here.”
“Security’s fine, but their leadership’s a little shaky.”
“Y’all don’t want me to come around this desk and kick your scrawny little Jewish ass up and down the block.”
“You’d have to catch me first.”
“Good point. Come over here and let me give y’all a hug, man.”
Preacher Simmons stood up in pieces. When you’re six-foot-eight and close to three hundred pounds, you’re allowed to unfold yourself one part at a time. In the mid-’60s, Preacher “the Creature” Simmons was an all-city, all-world forward from Boys High in Brooklyn. These days, he would have been drafted directly into the NBA and given a few million dollars to sit on the bench and learn the pro game. But back in ’64 he wound up at a basketball factory down South and in the midst of a point-shaving scandal. Unlike Connie Hawkins, Preacher didn’t have the resources to resurrect his career. He was a power player
“What brings you down to the bowels of hell today, Moe?”
“You busy tonight?”
“Busy? Nah, man, why?”
“Feel like helping me with something?”
“A case?”
“Yeah.”
“Help how?”
“Meet me in front of Nathan’s at nine tonight.”
“Coney Island Nathan’s or Oceanside?”
“Coney Island.”
“We investigating hot dogs and beer?”
“Maybe after.”
“After what?” he asked.
“After you teach someone a lesson in basketball.”
“Y’all talk some shit, Moe. You know that?”
“Can you meet me?”
“See you there.”
“I’ll explain later,” I said, waving my goodbye.
“Why later?”
“Because I hope to figure out what the hell we’re supposed to be doing by then.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I came up with something, but like the rest of my ideas about being a detective, it was half-baked and spur of the moment. You make do with what you have, I guess. As scheduled, Preacher Simmons met me out in front of Nathan’s at nine. I always liked playing ball on an empty stomach. Preacher had different ideas on the subject. He had four hot dogs, two large fries, and two enormous lemonades before I dropped him off at the courts. They didn’t call him “the Creature” for nothing.
“I guess sitting on your ass all day in that security office makes for hungry work.”
“Man, you know me going on seven years, Moe. For me, breathing makes for hungry work.”
Argue that.
When I picked him up at the entrance to the courts about an hour and a half later, Preacher had toweled off and changed into some fresh clothing. Even after a full day’s work, the drive in from Queens, and ninety minutes of ball, his eyes were on fire. He’d once told me that the only place he ever felt truly alive was on the court. That was never going to change. He was forty-three now and I wondered where the fire would go when his hips and knees started to break down. You can’t carry as much weight as he did and pound your legs on concrete and asphalt courts for as long as he had without paying a big price.
There was a burning in me, too, but mine was envy. At least Preacher had a place in the world where he felt alive. All I had now were French Cabernets and California Chardonnays. A stupid piece of carbon paper-did they even have carbon paper anymore? — had taken that place away from me forever. Being a cop, putting on that blue