As he turned his key in the lock, two men emerged from the space by the incinerator chute. He recognized Frank Volpi. "Jeez, you need a haircut, Frank."
Volpi pushed Sammy's face against the door, and the other asshole kicked him in the side. The second guy was one of the creeps who had killed Peter. Suddenly he knew he wasn't going to make it to South Beach.
Maybe that's why he decided not to give them a goddamned thing. For the next hour, Volpi and the other guy took turns trying to break him, and it was something they had a real talent for. But Sammy stuck to his vow. Maybe out of respect for Peter, or even Jack. They barely got a sound out of him.
Not when they stuck his head in the backed-up toilet. Not when they cooked his hand over the flames of the gas stove. Not even when they took him out to the shiny concrete balcony overlooking Eighteenth Street.
And threw him off.
Chapter 69
THIRTY MINUTES AFTER I LOST SAMMY, I was still wandering through Chelsea in a daze. I finally retreated to a booth in a coffee shop on Ninth. I decided to count my blessings. It had been a while since someone I thought was dead wasn't.
After the coffee, I headed back to Ferdi's. Maybe Sammy had bought some clothes there before. Maybe he used a credit card or left a phone number. Not likely, but it was the only thing I could think of, and I needed to walk.
At the corner of Eighteenth, a young mother sat on the edge of a large cement planter. She was making bird noises and hoisting her infant over her head.
One second it was urban Madonna-and-child bliss. The next, the mother was screaming at the sky, grabbing her baby, and running for her life.
I looked up.
At first I thought a large, black plastic garbage bag had gotten blown out of a high-floor window. As it fell, I could make out the windmilling arms and legs and the flash of white. I think I knew it was Sammy before he hit the sidewalk.
The horrible, moist whapp of the impact stunned everybody on the street. For a few heartbeats, Chelsea was far quieter than it ever is on a sunny weekday afternoon.
A white Lexus parked nearby flashed its headlights in panic. Then its burglar alarm began to wail.
A neighborhood kid pedaled over on a shiny BMX bicycle, stared at the crumpled stranger and the red stain flowering beneath him, and raced away. I got there next and had about a minute alone with him. The name on the driver's license in his wallet was Vincenzo Nicolo. But it was Sammy. The bruises on his arms and face looked as bad as those on Peter's body. There were raw burns on his hands. "I'm sorry," I whispered.
A minute later I was only one face in a ring of morbid curiosity. In five, the rubberneckers were three deep. When I heard the howl of approaching police sirens, I slipped back through the crowd and walked away.
I was even glad Sammy had hit me. At least I had the chance to touch him one last time before he died.
Chapter 70
AN HOUR LATER my legs had finally stopped shaking and I stood in the corner of an empty, chained-off lot on Avenue D. I pulled the tarp off the Beemer.
Despite two months of disuse, it started right up. I let it clear its throat, then tooled over to the FDR and left the city. I kept seeing Sammy falling and falling as if he had been up in the air for minutes. The image wouldn't go away. Ever.
I stopped along the way to call Isabel Giamalva. I told her I might stop by, and Isabel said, "Sure, it's been too long, Jack." Three hours later I was knocking on the door of her modest ranch house, a block and a half off Montauk's Main Street. Sammy's mother was still wearing her black slacks and jacket from her waitressing shift at Gordon's in Amagansett. I tried to pretend it was just a social call, but I was having trouble fooling myself.
"How were tips?" I asked, and forced myself to look Isabel in the eye.
"Eh, you know," she said. Isabel was dark haired, petite, small and round in an attractive way. She'd always been good to us – Peter, Sammy, me.
"People start arriving earlier every year. Except for the pashmina shawls, it could have been a Saturday in August. So who's this Pauline that Mack won't stop raving about?"
"I guess he's counting on another generation of Mullens, although you'd think by now he'd have had enough. I'll bring her by sometime. You'll like her, too."
"So what's up, Jack?" she finally said.
I had no intention of telling Isabel what had happened to her son. What was the point? With Sammy's fake ID and a little luck, maybe she'd never have to know. But I told her I was convinced that whoever killed Peter also killed Sammy. I asked if she ever suspected Sammy and Peter of doing anything wrong.
"I really didn't," said Isabel. "Does that make me a lousy mom? Sammy was working since he was sixteen and was always such a secretive kid. I figured it had something to do with being gay and wanting to spare me the details, not that I needed sparing. He never introduced me to any of his boyfriends, Jack. I still don't know if he even had a serious one."
"If he did, I never met him, either, Isabel."
"You're welcome to look around his room," she said, "but there's not much in it."
She led me to the end of a short hallway and sat on the bed while I scanned the shelves and the black Formica table that ran the width of the room. Sammy hadn't lived at home for years. The only vivid trace he left was a stack of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines. Beyond that were the skimpy remains of an American high-school education: an old French grammar, an algebra text, copies of A Separate Peace and KingLear.
The other books were photography manuals. Tucked neatly against the wall were books on portraiture, indoor-and outdoor-lighting techniques, the use of telephoto lenses for photographing wildlife.
"I didn't know Sammy was a photographer," I said.
"Yeah. No one did," said Isabel. "It was another thing he kept private. But right up until Peter died he'd come out here one or two evenings a month. Work straight through the night."
"Here? In your house?"
"He built a darkroom in the basement. Must have been five years ago. I've been meaning to put an ad in the Star and sell the equipment, but I just can't get myself to do it."
Chapter 71
THE LIGHT WOULDN'T GO ON. The fuse in the basement had blown. Isabel hadn't gotten around to replacing it. So she gave me an old tin flashlight before I descended the steep wooden stairs. I aimed the feeble beam around the moldy-smelling room. I could see the shadowy outlines of an old oil burner, a pair of ancient wooden water skis, and a folded-up Ping-Pong table.
In the midst of these garage-sale remainders, I could make out the darkroom. It ran half the length of one wall and was framed out with two-by-fours and plywood. It was about the size of a large bathroom. A rubber spinning door allowed you to enter and leave without compromising the darkness.
Inside, I moved the flashlight over the long black matte table. It was covered with gray plastic trays leading to a towering multitiered enlarger.
Against the wall were jugs of developer and a tall stack of unopened boxes of high-quality printing paper. For some reason, I've hated Kodak since about the time they started doing those warm, smarmy TV ads.
I sank into the only chair and beamed the flashlight to the wall. It was covered with cheap paneling that had warped from the moisture. Idly running my light along the seam, I could see that the edge on the left was badly worn and jagged. It had probably been pried off and reattached numerous times.